THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
FRANK  J.  KLINGBERG 


GERMANY 


GERMANY 

The  Welding  of  a 
World  Power 

By 

Wolf  von  Schierbrand 


New  York 

Doubleday,  Page  &  Company 
1907 


Coprneht,  igoz,  by 
Doubleday,  Page  lc  Company 

Published,  November,  190! 


DX> 


PREFACE 

Now  that  the  United  States  is  reaching  out  for  the  markets  of 
the  world,  and  taking  the  measure  of  its  great  rivals,  England 
and  Germany,  the  appearance  of  a  book  like  the  present  seems 
peculiarly  timely.  For  with  England  the  people  of  this  country 
are  more  or  less  acquainted  by  history  and  identity  of  language, 
and  are  thus  fairly  able  to  form  a  rather  exact  estimate  of 
that  country.  But  Germany  is  a  less  known  quantity.  Vague 
ideas  exist  of  the  high  culture  of  Germany,  of  the  thorough 
technical  training,  and  of  the  enormous  capacity  for  taking  pains, 
which  qualifications  the  typical  German  possesses  in  a  high 
degree.  These  characteristics  might  be  expected  by  an  out- 
sider to  give  Germany  a  decided  superiority  in  the  struggle  for 
material  and  political  development.  Those,  however,  who  have 
lived  on  the  inside  know  that  these  great  advantages  are  offset 
by  dangers  and  weaknesses. 

It  is  on  these  points,  therefore,  as  on  others,  that  the  writer 
wishes  to  give  his  views  and  experiences  to  the  country  of  his 
adoption. 

The  German,  while  possessing  an  unusual  power  of  application, 
yet  lacks  that  daring  initiative  which  is  rather  the  concomitant 
of  a  nation  bred  in  the  full  light  of  individual  and  public  liberty. 

This  book  aims  to  tell  the  truth.  It  is  free  from  bias.  The 
writer,  however,  frankly  avows  that  his  viewpoint  throughout 
is  that  of  one  whose  political  and  social  convictions  are  American, 
not  German,  not  European. 

A  recent  long  residence  in  Germany,  in  a  position  which  en- 
abled him  to  come  in  close  contact  with  every  phase  of  German 
life,  and  to  ponder  constantly  the  things  seen  and  heard, 
afforded  exceptional  opportunities  for  obtaining  a  faithful  reflex 
of  rapidly  changing  conditions.  This  work  aims  to  deal  fairly 
with  everything  and  everybody,  to  weigh  motives  and  make  due 
allowance  for  the  historic  past  and  its  peculiar  political  and  social 
bent.  Out  of  it  the  Germany  of  to-day  has  grown.  Without 

V 


vi  PREFACE 

a  thorough  appreciation  of  this  it  is  impossible  to  do  adequate 
justice  to  present  conformations. 

The  facts  contained  in  this  book  are  largely  derived  from  what 
the  writer  has  personally  seen  and  heard  during  his  stay  in 
Germany.  It  was,  of  course,  found  impossible  to  include  in  its 
scope  everything  of  interest,  but  its  limits  are  drawn  wide  enough 
to  give  the  reader  an  intelligent  conception  of  the  main  institu- 
tions, and  of  the  main  driving  forces  in  Germany's  public  life. 
Beside  social,  political  and  industrial  aspects,  some  features  are 
dealt  with  which  are  in  a  sense  unique.  That  person  of  transcend- 
ing interest,  the  Kaiser,  has  considerable  space  devoted  to  him 
in  these  pages,  both  in  his  public  and  in  his  private  capacity. 
He  is  considered  as  a  man  and  as  a  ruler,  and  from  either  point 
of  view  he  commands  attention.  The  moral  strife  that  is  now 
rending  Germany  is  depicted  fully  as  its  absorbing  character 
demands. 

The  thanks  of  the  author  are  due  to  the  editors  of  The  Century, 
The  World's  Work,  The  North  American  Review,  The  Forum  and 
The  Critic  for  permission  kindly  granted  him  to  reproduce  in 
this  work  articles  recently  contributed  by  him. 

To  the  intelligent  understanding  of  the  American  people  this 
book  is  commended. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

PREFACE .        •  v 

CHAPTER 

I.  Germany  as  a  World  Power  .        .                 .  i 

II.  The  Kaiser  as  He  Is 15 

III.  The  Kaiser's  Personal  Influence     ...  24 

IV.  The  Kaiser's  Family  Life       .         .         .         .37 
V.  Germany's  Political  Turning-Point        .         .  50 

VI.  Political  Life 56 

VII.  The  Socialist  Movement         .         .         .        .  76 

VIII.  Commerce  and  Manufacturing        .         .         .  97 

IX.  Krupp  and  Siemens 115 

X.  Shipping 131 

XL  The  Army 148 

XII.  The  Navy 166 

XIII.  Education 183 

XIV.  Social  Customs 196 

XV.  Germany's  Colonies         .         .         .         .         .218 

XVI.   German  Courts 231 

XVII.  The  Press 244 

XVIII.  Literature  and  Art 266 

XIX.  German  Chancellors 282 

XX.  The  Outlook  for  Germany      ....  293 


vn 


GERMANY 

CHAPTER   I 

GERMANY    AS    A    WORLD    POWER 

WHEN  Bismarck  retired,  twelve  years  ago,  Germany  was  no 
World  power.  She  was  a  country  which,  in  a  military  sense,  was 
considered  preeminent  in  Europe,  and  which,  by  reason  of  the 
tripartite  agreement  between  her,  Austria  and  Italy,  filled  a  lead- 
ing position,  in  a  political  sense,  on  the  Continent.  But  a  world 
power  she  was  not.  The  very  word  had  not  then  been  coined. 
It  was  before  the  series  of  startling  events  that  have  since  trans- 
formed the  whole  situation  in  the  far  East  and  brought  Japan 
and  China  into  the  family  of  nations  as  potent  factors.  It  was 
before  the  Spanish-American  War,  which  in  two  hemispheres 
projected  the  United  States  into  the  midst  of  the  political  arena. 
There  have  seldom  been  ten  years  in  the  world's  history  which 
have  wrought  such  radical  changes,  changes  of  such  far-reaching 
importance,  as  those  since  1892.  The  world  at  large  has  as  yet 
scarcely  gained  the  right  focus  for  viewing  those  momentous 
happenings.  Next  to  this  country  it  is  Germany  that  has  most 
largely  profited  from  the  new  situation. 

It  was  the  Kaiser  who  was  the  first  in  Germany  to  speak  of 
his  nation  as  a  world  power.  It  was  in  one  of  the  most  felicitous 
speeches  he  ever  made — on  the  launching  of  a  gigantic  ocean 
greyhound — that  he  used  the  term.  He  did  not  define  his  mean- 
ing of  the  word,  but  he  was  generally  understood.  What  he 
meant  was  that  Germany,  transformed  into  one  of  the  three 
leading  exporting  and  naval  powers,  expanding  as  a  shipping 
and  colonial  nation,  and  rapidly  growing  as  an  industrial  and 
manufacturing  centre,  must  needs  enlarge  her  mental  horizon, 
and  reckon  not  only  with  her  Continental  neighbours,  not  only 
with  Europe,  but  with  the  whole  globe  as  a  competitor,  customer, 
friend  or  foe.  She  must  extend  her  rjolitical  and  commercial 


influence  all  over  the  world,  and  must  have  ships  on  every  sea 
as  well  as  merchants  in  every  port.  As  the  Kaiser  expressed  the 
same  idea,  on  a  later  occasion,  in  graphic  though  somewhat 
boastful  language:  "Nothing  must  be  done  anywhere  on  the 
globe  without  the  sanction  of  Germany's  ruler. " 

This,  in  a  nutshell,  is  his  conception  of  Germany  as  a  world 
power.  It  found,  of  course,  no  unanimous  assent,  either  in 
Germany  or  in  other  countries.  There  were  many  in  Germany 
then  as  there  are  many  now  who  deemed  his  aims  too  extrava- 
gant and  the  means  of  their  realization — comprising,  above  all,  a 
big  navy  and  a  bolder  and  more  assertive  foreign  policy — not  in 
accord  with  the  empire's  best  interests.  The  whole  Liberal  party 
in  Germany  and  a  number  of  leaders  among  the  government 
supporters  are  opposed  to  him  on  this  point.  But  the  Kaiser, 
as  is  well  understood  by  all  who  know  the  Germany  of  to-day, 
is  masterful.  He  contrives  to  impose  his  will  and  his  ambitions 
on  the  nation  he  rules,  and  that  part  of  it  which  is  dominant  in 
politics  has  been  in  the  main  won  over  to  his  ideas.  Thus,  for 
weal  or  woe,  Germany  has  embarked  on  the  troubled  seas  of  the 
new  policy  outlined  by  him,  then  and  since,  in  a  number  of  force- 
ful and  picturesque  speeches. 

The  first  outcome  of  the  Kaiser's  world  policy  was  Germany's 
share  in  the  winding-up  of  the  Chino-Japanese  War,  when  she 
joined  Russia  and  France  in  wresting  out  of  Japan's  grasp  the 
prize  won  by  the  sword.  It  is  a  question  whether  that  was  a 
wise  step  for  Germany  to  take.  For  one  thing,  it  drove  Japan 
into  England's  arms,  and  made  that  pushing  Eastern  nation 
hostile  to  Germany.  This  is  a  fact  which  is  of  great  importance 
to  a  power  having  serious  and  growing  interests  in  far  Asia. 
Next,  Germany  played  her  part  in  the  Turco-Greek  War,  par- 
ticularly in  its  settlement;  and  she  played  her  part  well,  obtain- 
ing afterwards  from  Turkey  the  big  railway  concession  in  the 
Euphrates  Valley  and  other  benefits.  In  the  Cretan  trouble  she 
purposely  refrained  from  doing  more  than  was  necessary  to  main- 
tain her  prestige ;  but  she  did  a  great  deal  more  than  Bismarck 
would  have  done  under  similar  circumstances.  She  again  used 
her  opportunities  well  during  and  shortly  after  the  Spanish- 
American  War,  when  she  seized  upon  Kiaochou,  thus  securing 
for  herself  a  point  of  leverage  in  China.  She  then  acquired,  by 


GERMANY    AS  A  WORLD  POWER  3 

right  of  purchase,  the  Carolines,  and,  by  amicable  settlement 
with  this  country  and  England,  the  main  portion  of  the  Samoan 
Isles.  She  has  not  been  successful — except  in  one  instance,  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  by  an  understanding  with 
Turkey — in  her  strenuous  efforts  to  acquire  coaling  stations  at 
convenient  points  along  the  main  road  to  far  Asia,  though  her 
need  in  that  respect  is  both  palpable  and  urgent.  In  Africa  her 
latent  designs  to  extend  her  sphere  of  influence  have  not  recently 
been  favoured  by  opportunity.  Her  domains  there  are,  for  the 
most  part,  arid  and  susceptible  of  but  small  development,  or,  as 
in  the  case  of  Togo  and  the  Cameroons,  unfit  for  European  habita- 
tion by  reason  of  a  murderous  climate.  Her  intention  of  buying 
from  Spain  the  important  island  of  Fernando  Po,  thus  making 
her  Cameroons  possession  twice  as  valuable,  has  for  the  time 
miscarried.  Nothing  at  all  to  Germany's  advantage  has  re- 
sulted from  England's  Boer  war,  although  she  fully  expected 
something.  In  China,  too,  the  implied  monopoly  of  commer- 
cially exploiting  the  province  of  Shantung — one  of  the  best 
Chinese  provinces  for  mineral  and  railroad  development — which 
was  granted  to  Germany  in  her  agreement  with  China  ceding 
Kiaochou,  has  come  to  naught.  Both  this  country  and  England 
have  vigorously  opposed  German  pretensions  in  this  respect, 
on  the  principle  of  the  "open  door,"  and  have  thus  deprived 
Germany  of  the  chance  of  extensively  fructifying  her  bargain 
with  China  and  treating  Shantung  as  her  exclusive  domain. 
These  and  other  reasons  tend  to  keep  Germany  in  her  Chinese 
policy  on  the  side  of  France  and  Russia,  the  two  countries  which, 
for  strong  reasons  of  their  own,  favour  the  policy  of  recognizing 
a  chain  of  "separate  interest  spheres"  with  a  view  to  the 
eventual  dismemberment  of  the  huge  empire. 

From  the  above  statement  it  is  plain  that  Germany,  during 
her  brief  career  as  a  world  power,  has  had  a  fair  measure  of 
success,  as  well  as  some  reverses.  The  opportunities  that  came 
to  her  were  boldly  and  adroitly  used.  But  the  question  never- 
theless arises:  "Will  Germany  for  any  length  of  time  be  able  to 
maintain  herself  as  a  world  power?"  And  further,  will  she  be 
able  to  contend  successfully  in  the  fierce  struggle  for  naval, 
colonial  and  commercial  expansion,  without  allies  or  at  least 
strong  friends?  The  question  may  well  be  asked,  for  during 


4  GERMANY 

the  long  troubles  in  China,  Germany  became  for  the  first  time 
painfully  aware  that  in  her  world  policy  she  stood  without 
friends.  Again  and  again,  at  crucial  moments  of  that  long  oc- 
cupation of  Chinese  territory,  it  was  brought  home  to  Germany, 
though  she  it  was  of  all  the  powers  interested  in  that  punitive 
campaign  that  had  been  most  terribly  affronted,  that  her  interests 
ran  parallel  to  none  other.  It  was  only  with  the  utmost  diplo- 
matic effort  that  she  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  sort  of  amende 
honorable  from  China. 

What,  then,  are  Germany's  points  of  weakness  and  strength 
as  a  world  power  ?  To  know  that  is  virtually  an  answer  to  the 
foregoing  two  questions. 

It  requires  commercial,  naval  and  military  preeminence  to 
be  and  remain  a  world  power.  In  some  cases,  due  to  excep- 
tionally favourable  geographical  conditions,  military  supremacy 
may  be,  to  a  certain  extent,  dispensed  with.  This  is  true  of  both 
England  and  the  United  States,  and  it  is  a  generally  acknowl- 
edged fact  that  does  not  seem  to  require  elaborate  explanation. 
But  for  Germany  to  maintain  herself  as  a  world  power  there  is 
no  exception  to  the  rule.  Situated  as  she  is  in  the  very  heart 
of  Europe,  surrounded  on  every  side  by  powerful  and  ambitious 
nations,  military  supremacy  is  indispensable. 

In  this  respect  she  does  not  disappoint  her  friends.  Ger- 
many still  stands  foremost  in  military  power.  The  enormous 
prestige  she  won  in  1870-71  holds  good.  She  has  not  supinely 
rested  on  her  laurels  all  these  thirty  years.  Her  army  is  to-day 
in  every  respect  far  superior  to  that  with  which  she  vanquished 
the  French.  Enormous  improvements  have  been  made  in  the 
commissariat,  in  the  physical  training  of  her  soldiers,  in  their 
morale  even;  and  her  telegraph,  telephone,  railway  construction 
and  aeronautic  departments  are  considered  the  best  extant. 
The  general  staff  of  her  army  is  the  unapproached  model  for  the 
whole  world.  There  has  also  been  a  great  increase  in  numbers. 
The  peace  establishment  of  Germany's  army  is  to-day  larger 
than  the  vast  host  of  600,000  men,  a  number  up  to  that  time 
unprecedented,  which  Napoleon  I  led  to  the  conquest  of  Russia 
in  1812.  And  her  armies  on  a  war  footing  amount  to  a  grand 
total  of  5,788,000  men  and  250,000  officers.  With  these  figures 
she  has  left  France  far  in  the  rear,  and  exceeds  even  Russia's 


GERMANY  AS  A  WORLD  POWER  5 

nominal  total  by  600,000.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  Germany 
alone,  from  the  purely  military  viewpoint,  is  to-day  more  than 
a  match  for  the  combined  forces  of  France  and  Russia,  taking, 
of  course,  into  due  account  the  much  greater  actual  efficiency 
of  the  German  army  when  compared  with  those  of  her  two 
principal  military  rivals.  In  the  history  of  the  world  there  has 
never  been  any  such  surpassingly  powerful  fighting  machine 
as  the  German  army  of  to-day. 

As  to  the  next  point,  namely,  naval  power,  Germany  is, 
however,  neither  in  prestige — which,  in  fact,  is  totally  lack- 
ing in  her  case — nor  in  actual  strength  on  a  par  with 
England  or  France.  In  fact,  for  the  time  being  she 
stands  but  fourth  in  the  list,  Russia  at  least  nominally 
exceeding  her  in  the  number  of  vessels.  So  far  Germany 
has  not  had  a  chance  such  as,  for  instance,  this  country  had 
a  few  years  ago,  to  demonstrate  her  actual  naval  fighting 
strength;  the  only  naval  skirmish  in  the  Franco-German  War, 
in  West  Indian  waters,  having  amounted  to  little. 

There  are,  however,  a  number  of  facts  which,  in  the  absence 
of  any  practical  test  on  a  large  scale,  tend  to  show  partly  what 
the  German  navy  at  this  time  really  amounts  to,  and  partly 
what  it  will  mean  in  the  near  future.  As  to  the  first  point,  the 
unanimous  opinion  of  those  naval  experts,  no  matter  of  what 
nationality,  who  have  had  a  chance  to  examine  carefully  the 
workings  of  the  German  navy,  is  to  the  effect  that  in  general  effi- 
ciency, in  discipline  and  in  spirit  the  men  and  officers  have  no 
superiors,  and  that  the  ships,  as  fighting  machines  for  harbour 
and  coast  defense  and  for  battle  on  the  open  seas,  are  first-class. 
To  mention,  out  of  the  mass  of  this  favourable  opinion,  just  two 
cases,  both  American,  I  shall  here  cite  Admiral  Evans  and 
Commander  Beehler,  the  United  States  naval  attache*  in  Berlin. 
Both  deem  the  German  navy,  in  all  essential  points  excepting 
size,  equal  to  the  English  and  superior  to  the  French.  That 
German  characteristic,  thoroughness,  has  been  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  German  navy,  both  as  to  men  and  ships,  with  won- 
derful results.  The  men  are  trained  to  a  degree  unknown  in  any 
other  navy,  not  excepting  the  American.  The  practice,  inaug- 
urated by  the  Kaiser  since  his  accession,  of  annually  holding 
big  naval  manoeuvres  in  all  respects  closely  resembling  actual 


6  GERMANY 

naval  warfare,  has  been  of  immense  benefit  in  this  respect,  and 
their  considerable  cost  has  been  a  wise  expenditure. 

That  is  the  verdict  of  competent  judges  as  to  the  German  navy 
of  to-day.  But  the  real  German  navy — i.e.,  that  now  in  process 
of  formation,  will  be  a  vastly  different  and  more  formidable  affair. 
A  plan  of  enlargement  was  adopted  by  the  Reichstag,  two  years 
ago,  at  the  urgent  solicitation  of  the  Kaiser,  and  has  thus 
become  an  organic  law  of  the  Empire,  not  subject  to  fluctuations 
of  public  opinion.  The  enormous  sums  needed  for  the  purpose, 
amounting  in  all  to  over  $250,000,000,  have  been  appropriated, 
in  annual  instalments,  by  the  same  national  parliament.  The 
scheme  provides  for  the  more  than  doubling  of  the  present 
German  navy,  and  for  the  remodelling  and  modernizing  of  about 
a  score  of  the  old  vessels — those  of  the  so-called  "Sachsen" 
and  "Oldenburg"  classes  or  types.  The  transformation  is  to 
be  completed,  according  to  the  wording  of  the  law,  by  1915; 
but  it  is  an  open  secret  that  the  rate  of  construction  has  been 
much  accelerated,  so  that  the  year  1910  will  probably  see  the 
young  naval  giant  in  readiness.  When  completed,  the  German 
navy  will  consist  of  thirty-seven  battle-ships — the  number  at 
present  is  fifteen — comprising  twenty-seven  of  the  largest  and 
most  powerful  type,  eight  of  the  second  size,  and  two  smaller 
ones;  twenty-six  armoured  cruisers,  ten  large  and  sixteen  smaller 
ones;  thirty-two  sea-going  gunboats,  averaging  350  tons  each; 
and  fourteen  big  armoured  vessels  for  coast  and  harbor  defense. 
The  total  equipment  will  be  109  fighting  vessels,  manned  by 
55,000  seamen  and  marines,  with  74,000  naval  reserves,  and, 
for  batteries,  586  heavy  guns  and  2,836  secondary  and  machine 
guns.  This  navy  will  be  equal  in  the  three  points  mentioned — 
namely,  number  and  tonnage  of  vessels,  men  and  guns — to  the 
present  French  navy,  with  the  enormous  advantage,  however, 
of  being  new,  up  to  date,  and  equipped  with  all  the  most  recent 
improvements.  Germany  would  then  be,  unless  France  should 
follow  in  her  footsteps,  of  which  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any 
likelihood  at  present,  the  second  sea-power  in  the  world. 

Her  merchant  marine  consists  now  of  4,108  vessels,  with  a 
total  of  2,826,400  tons,  and  crews  aggregating  50,556  men.  One- 
third  of  these  vessels  are  steamships.  This  shows  an  increase  of 
fifty  per  cent,  during  the  last  decade,  and  puts  Germany,  so  far 


GERMANY  AS  A  WORLD  POWER  7 

as  the  ocean  traffic  goes,  in  the  second  place;  though,  if  we  in- 
clude our  lake  shipping,  the  American  merchant  marine  would 
be  far  ahead  of  Germany. 

In  population  Germany  is  gaining  rapidly  as  well.  The 
official  census  of  December,  1900,  gives  her  56,345,014,  a  gain  of 
over  four  millions  since  1895,  or  eight  per  cent,  within  five  years. 

As  the  last,  and  most  important,  of  Germany's  qualifications 
as  a  world  power,  her  commerce  must  be  mentioned.  The 
figures  I  quote  are  from  German  official  statistics.  According 
to  them,  she  imported  during  1900  a  total  of  49,491,400  tons, 
valued  at  6,043,000,000  marks.  She  exported  36,318,100  tons, 
worth  4,752,600,000  marks.  Of  het  imports  the  United  States 
famished  1,020,000,000  marks'  worth,  while  of  her  exports 
912,000,000  marks'  worth  went  to  England.  These  two  coun- 
tries do  most  business  with  her,  American  imports  furnishing 
over  one-sixth  of  the  total  and  English  exports  about  one-fifth. 
Since  1891,  when  German  imports  amounted  to  4,403,000,000 
marks,  this  branch  of  her  foreign  trade  has  increased  over  25 
per  cent.,  while  the  exports,  which  in  1891  were  3,339,000,000, 
have  since  risen  by  about  30  per  cent.  Her  transmarine  export 
trade  has  grown  at  an  even  greater  ratio.  It  amounted  in  1900 
to  2,634,000,000  marks,  or  over  56  per  cent,  of  the  total,  being 
an  increase  of  about  40  per  cent,  since  1891.  The  bulk  of  her 
transmarine  exportations  being  finished  products,  this  is,  there- 
fore, the  most  profitable  section  of  her  trade.  Even  the  severe 
financial  depression  that  set  in  about  eighteen  months  ago, 
and  whose  effects  are  still  noticeable,  has  not  been  able  to  check 
the  commercial  growth  of  Germany ;  for  the  advance  figures  for 
her  total  exports  and  imports  during  1901,  although  but  ap- 
proximate, show  but  a  slight  falling  off  against  the  preceding 
year. 

Summarizing,  then,  Germany's  claims  to  consideration  as  a 
world  power,  it  is  seen  that  her  military  supremacy  is  unde- 
niable. She  has,  as  shown  above,  an  efficient  navy,  which  she 
is  now  transforming  into  the  second  largest  in  the  world,  and 
which,  to  confine  myself  strictly  to  the  present,  is  about  thirty 
per  cent,  stronger  than  the  American  navy.  Her  commerce 
is  steadily  growing,  and  is  the  second  largest  in  imports  and 
exports,  though  by  no  means  in  domestic  trade,  in  which  point 


8  GERMANY 

Miis  country  leads  the  world.  Germany  has  also  so  i?.s  traits 
in  her  national  character  which  constitute  undeniable  advan- 
tages. Her  people,  as  traders,  bring  into  play  a  more  thorough 
education  than  either  the  English  or  the  Americans  possess. 
Her  mercantile  colleges  fit  out  young  and  intelligent  men  with 
all  the  mental  equipment  they  need — not  only  languages,  but  a 
reliable  knowledge  of  foreign  countries,  men,  and  methods. 
The  custom,  so  largely  prevailing  for  many  years  past  in  large 
German  exporting  houses,  of  sending  out  young  relatives  or 
clerks  to  countries  that  are  their  main  customers,  to  study  the 
field  on  the  spot  for  a  term  of  years — often,  too,  settling  them 
there  permanently  as  their  representatives — is  a  wise  one.  It 
enables  the  home  firm  to  be  correctly,  closely  and  quickly  in- 
formed of  everything  that  will  be  of  use  to  it. 

Then,  too,  German  patience,  frugality  and  adaptability  are  of 
great  use  to  Germany  in  her  transmarine  trade  relations.  Where 
the  Englishman  often  persists  in  methods  no  longer  successful 
in  certain  countries,  and  where  the  American  wAnts  big  and 
quick  profits,  the  German,  by  the  exercise  of  the  above  quali- 
ties, frequently  carries  off  the  prize.  The  German  exporter 
studies  to  please  his  foreign  customer,  sinking  his  own  tastes 
and  predilections  in  favour  of  those  of  the  distant  purchaser. 
Again,  he  accommodates  himself  to  the  often  rather  unsatis- 
factory modes  of  payment  obtaining  in  many  foreign  lands, 
giving  long  credits,  etc.  Of  course,  his  linguistic  knowledge 
likewise  plays  an  important  part  in  giving  him  a  better  status 
with  the  natives.  This  is  particularly  true  in  the  case  of  Spanish- 
speaking  countries. 

All  these  are  points  of  strength.  Germany's  points  of  weak- 
ness, however,  also  fill  a  considerable  list.  First,  politically  con- 
sidered, Germany's  foreign  policy  is  now  in  a  bad  way.  The 
Dreibund  is  visibly  crumbling.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  for 
Germany  to  make  friends  with  either  the  United  States  or 
England,  or  both.  Let  this  be  understood  plainly.  Germany, 
without  such  a  close  and  friendly  understanding,  will  be,  in  the 
long  run,  powerless.  Her  rdle  as  a  world  power  will  be  over 
and  done  with.  The  reasons  are  clear  to  anybody  who  will  take 
the  trouble  to  see  patent  facts.  Germany  is  losing  Austria  and 
Italy  as  hard-and-fast  allies.  No  one  who  has  watched  political 


GERMANY  AS  A  WORLD  POWER  9 

events  during  the  last  ten  years  doubts  that.  She  is  thus  prac- 
tically isolated.  And  Germany  cannot,  like  England,  afford  a 
term  of  "splendid  isolation."  The  contingency  of  which 
Bismarck  spoke  in  his  Memoirs,  and  which,  according  to  that 
book,  was  his  "nightmare,  "  has  arrived.  A  repetition  of  the  old 
Triple  Alliance,  composed  of  Austria,  France  and  Russia,  has 
become  a  strong  possibility.  By  that  it  is  not  meant  that  such 
an  alliance  is  likely  to  come  immediately.  In  fact,  the  present 
Austrian  monarch  is  too  loyal  to  lend  his  aid  in  forming  such  a 
political  combination,  unless  vital  interests  of  his  monarchy 
should  be  at  stake;  but  he  is  aged,  and  it  is  certain  that  his  suc- 
cessor has  never  shown  any  German  sympathies,  and  that  he  is 
strongly  influenced  by  his  Czech  wife.  Accordingly,  later  on 
a  radical  change  may  be  expected  in  Austro-Hungary's  foreign 
policy;  and  the  old  Kaunitz  alliance,  which  once  came  near  wip- 
ing out  Prussia's  political  existence,  may  be  revived.  Bismarck 
gave  expression  to  this  conviction  on  several  occasions  during 
the  last  years  of  his  life,  and  he  also,  as  mentioned  above,  re- 
corded it  in  his  Memoirs.* 

Even  if  the  Dreibund  were  not  in  a  state  of  decay,  but  still 
in  its  pristine  vigour,  that  would  not  help  Germany  in  her 
position  as  a  world  power.  Austria's  interests  are  purely 
Continental,  and  her  foreign  commerce  is  insignificant.  Her  navy 
is  not  worth  serious  consideration.  Italy,  beside  being  finan- 
cially, as  well  as  in  size  and  population,  the  weakest  of  the  great 
powers,  is  absolutely  in  no  position  to  further  Germany's  ambi- 
tions in  other  parts  of  the  world.  Of  late  years,  too,  she  has 
committed  herself  to  a  policy  of  retrenchment,  and  in  pursuance 
of  it  both  her  army  and  navy  have  been  reduced.  She  is  building 
few  new  ships.  Since  her  Abyssinian  reverses,  Italy's  foreign 
policy  has  become  wholly  defensive,  and  merely  directed  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  status  quo.  For  her  freedom  to  plough  the 
seas  and  maintain  her  trade,  she  relies  on  her  recent  friendly 
understanding  with  France,  and  for  the  preservation  of  present 
conditions  in  the  Mediterranean,  on  her  old-time  friendship  with 
England. 

Thus  her  two  allies  are  both  unable  and  unwilling  to  embark 
with  Germany  on  her  policy  as  a  world  power.  This  has  been 

*  Part  II,  p.  229,  etc. 


16  GERMANY 

proclaimed  of  late  in  positive  language  in  the  three  Parliaments 
by  the  leading  statesmen  of  the  old  Dreibund  powers.  Now,  to 
whom  else  can  Germany  turn  in  her  absolute  need  of  obtaining 
guarantees  against  a  possible  interruption  of  her  expansive  com- 
mercial and  colonial  policy? 

To  Russia  and  France?  Certainly  not.  Those  two  powers 
must  be  left  out  of  such  a  reckoning.  For  while  it  is  quite  within 
Germany's  ability  to  enter  into  a  definite  understanding  with 
either  or  both  of  them,  at  a  given  time  and  for  a  given  purpose — 
as  she  did,  for  instance,  with  Russia  and  France  toward*  the  close 
of  the  Chino-Japanese  War,  and  with  France  in  Africa,  where 
Germans  and  French,  for  the  first  time  in  several  centuries,  were 
fighting  shoulder  to  shoulder  to  checkmate  a  British  advance — 
it  is  quite  out  of  the  question  that  an  agreement  of  a  general 
nature  can  be  made  between  Germany  on  the  one  side  and  Russia 
and  France  on  the  other.  Still  less  is  it  possible  for  Germany  to 
enter  into  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  with  these  two 
powers,  even  as  to  interests  in  Asia  or  Africa.  Leaving  aside 
the  fact  that  Russia  and  France  are  together  strong  enough  to 
carry  out,  in  most  cases,  their  colonial,  political  and  commercial 
schemes  in  those  continents  as  well  as  in  Europe,  and  therefore 
want  no  third  power  to  share  in  their  course  of  action  and  to 
influence  it,  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  Dual  Alliance 
was  originally  based  on  a  common  enmity  toward  Germany, 
and  that  Russia  knows  full  well  that  to  try  to  admit  Germany 
to  the  benefits  of  this  agreement  would  eventually  mean  to  drive 
away  France.  Admitting  that  the  reasons  for  France's  unwil- 
lingness in  this  respect  are  largely  sentimental,  and  that  to-day 
sentiment  is  rarely  the  ruling  factor  in  statecraft,  still  the  senti- 
ment impelling  France  on  her  road,  side  by  side  with  Russia, 
is  very  strong.  By  systematic  training  during  the  past  thirty 
years  the  so-called  "revanche  idea"  has  become  a  part  of  the 
French  nature  and  of  the  national  creed — in  fact,  the  very  first 
paragraph  in  it. 

But  there  are  other  reasons  militating  against  an  intimate 
understanding  between  Germany  and  these  two  countries. 
Germany's  main  object  in  Asia  is  the  extension  of  her  export 
traffic  and  the  acquiring  of  points  of  vantage  along  the  coasts — 
coaling  stations  for  her  navy,  a  number  of  pieds  a  terre  for  net 


GERMANY  AS  A  WORLD  POWER  n 

troops  and  radiating  points  for  her  commerce.  There  is  hardly 
a  point,  however,  where,  in  carrying  out  her  designs,  she  would 
not  run  counter  to  important  French  or  Russian  interests.  There 
are  but  a  few  such  points  left,  excepting  some  belonging  to 
Portugal,  that  are  not  in  possession  of  either  Russia  and  France, 
England  or  the  United  States.  Russia  and  France  have  vast 
Asiatic  possessions  with  which  they  do  not  want  Germany  to 
interfere,  and  which  they  desire  to  monopolize  commercially. 
This  policy  of  exclusive  commercial  exploitation,  unwise  though 
it  may  be  for  countries  strong  in  industry  and  commerce,  is 
probably  the  only  one  for  Russia  to  pursue;  and  though  the 
wisdom  of  it  is  less  apparent  in  the  case  of  France,  it  is  the 
one  which  the  latter  country  has  traditionally  held  as  a  part  of 
her  colonial  policy. 

There  is  no  other  important  power  with  which  Germany  could 
unite  in  an  endeavour  to  extend  and  maintain  her  world  policy 
as  against  that  of  Russia  and  France,  on  the  one  side,  and 
England  and  the  United  States,  on  the  other.  I  group  England 
and  the  United  States  together,  for  there  is  no  use  in  denying  the 
fact  that  the  overwhelming  public  opinion  of  both  countries 
wishes  such  a  grouping,  and  even  takes  it  for  granted.  True, 
there  is  no  formal  alliance  between  the  two  English-speaking 
powers,  nor  could  there  well  be  under  existing  political 
conditions.  But  there  is  something  stronger  than  that — a 
powerful  and  steady  national  sentiment  on  both  sides,  whose  cur- 
rent runs  in  the  direction  of  mutually  safeguarding  vital  interests. 

Wherever  the  living  forces  that  eventually  shape  the  politics 
of  the  world  are  closely  and  calmly  studied,  it  must  be  recognized 
that  Germany  is  too  weak — or,  shall  I  say,  not  powerful  enough — - 
to  undertake  and  pursue  unaided  her  policy  as  a  world  power. 
England  alone  would  be  powerful  enough  to  drive  her  off  the 
seas  at  any  time  that  the  vital  interests  of  England  and  Germany 
seriously  clashed.  England  and  the  United  States  together 
could  accomplish  that  task  with  less  trouble  and  expense. 
England  and  the  United  States  with  their  colonies  form  the 
most  important  item  in  Germany's  foreign  commerce — about 
one-third  of  the  total.  Germany  could  not  for  a  moment  stand 
as  a  world  power  against  the  combined  will  of  England  and  the 
United  States.  These  two  powers,  in  fact,  would  be,  as  foes. 


.12  GERMANY 

the  most  dangerous  of  all  to  Germany's  life  interests.  It  is 
Germany's  wisest  course — nay,  more,  her  only  possible  course — 
to  bind  these  two  countries  to  herself  by  ties  of  strong  friendship. 
I  shall  not  speak  here  of  the  strong  sentimental  reasons  which 
ought  to  impel  Germany  in  this  direction,  although  these  are, 
and  ought  to  be,  potent  factors.  But  judging  the  situation 
solely  from  the  viewpoint  of  enlightened  self-interest,  it  is  the 
only  solution  for  her  if  she  means  to  continue  her  world  policy. 
And  if  there  is  anything  that  may  be  declared  with  safety  about 
the  Kaiser's  future  course  of  action,  it  is  that  he  does  mean  to 
persevere  in  it.  However,  it  is  an  open  secret  that  the  Kaiser 
has  for  some  time  clearly  perceived  that  a  close  understanding 
with  England  and  the  United  States  is  Germany's  safest  policy, 
and  that  he  has  been  shaping  his  course  accordingly.  But  the 
fact,  nevertheless,  remains  that  as  yet  no  such  intimate  friend- 
ship has  been  contracted  with  those  two  powers — certainly  not 
with  England. 

This  present  isolation  forms,  then,  the  chief  weakness  of  the 
young  empire  from  the  political  point  of  view. 

Germany's  commercial  weakness  lies  partly  in  the  fact  that 
both  her  natural  resources  and  her  financial  powers  are  inferior 
to  those  of  England  and  the  United  States,  and  to  a  certain 
degree  even  to  those  of  France.  Germany's  per  capita  wealth  is 
much  lower  than  that  of  the  three  countries  named.  She  is 
economical  and  cautious,  but  she  has  also  the  faults  of  these 
virtues — a  serious  matter  when  contending  for  the  commercial 
supremacy  of  the  world.  In  addition,  her  trade  conditions  are 
no  longer  stable,  but  fluctuate  greatly,  as  export  trade  must  and 
will.  Her  chief  staples  for  manufacturing — coal  and  iron — are 
not  as  advantageously  located  as  those  of  her  two  main 
competitors.  As  compared  particularly  with  this  country,  the 
German  nation  does  not  possess  that  quick  perception,  that 
boldness  and  originality  of  methods  and  execution,  which,  since 
Americans  seriously  set  out  on  their  career  as  great  exporters, 
have  been  universally  recognized  as  among  their  chief  points  of 
strength.  Nor  is  inventiveness  a  leading  German  characteristic, 
as  it  is  an  American  one. 

Germany's  geographical  position,  too,  is  a  decided  element  oi 
vveak-ness.  As  regards  sea  trade  with  the  main  European  coun- 


GERMANY  AS   A   WORLD    POWER  13 

tries,  she  is  not  so  advantageously  situated  as  England.  She 
lies  "cooped  up "  far  to  the  northeast ;  and  to  gain  the  open  water 
tradeways  she  has  first  to  skirt  for  days  a  dangerous  coast,  both 
in  the  Baltic  and  the  North  Sea,  where  her  vessels,  in  time  of 
war,  are  especially  liable  to  seizure  and  search.  It  costs  a  great 
deal  more  to  move  a  ton  of  goods  by  sea  from  German  harbours 
than  from  English,  French,  or  even  Spanish  ports.  Germany  is 
not  so  near  to  the  Atlantic  as  her  chief  rivals.  As  to  the  Pacific — 
conceded  to  be  an  avenue  of  trade  which  in  the  near  future  will 
become  of  almost  equal  importance  with  the  Atlantic — Germany 
is  again  placed  at  a  distinct  disadvantage.  The  projected  Isthmic 
Canal  will  intensify  this.  The  difference  of  distance,  as  between 
German  harbours  and  the  principal  Atlantic  ports  of  this  country, 
to  China,  Japan  and  some  other  points  in  the  Pacific,  will  amount 
to  between  3,000  and  4,500  miles,  once  that  canal  has  been 
completed.  This  will  hereafter  render  German  competition  in 
the  carrying  trade  to  that  quarter  of  the  globe  more  and  more 
difficult. 

There  is  one  other  important  obstacle  in  Germany's  way  as  a 
world  power.  That  is,  however,  of  a  domestic  character,  and 
its  name  is  the  Agrarian  party.  To  humour  this  party,  the 
present  German  Cabinet  has  submitted  to  the  Reichstag  a  tariff 
bill  framed  chiefly  with  a  view  to  satisfying  that  party's  demands 
for  a  tariff  enabling  the  German  agriculturist  to  compete  with 
imports  of  American  foodstuffs  on  better  terms  than  those  now 
obtaining.  If  the  bill  becomes  a  law,  now  or  later,  it  will  go  far 
to  weaken  Germany's  position  as  a  world  power,  for  it  will  in- 
crease the  price  of  the  necessaries  of  life  for  the  labouring  popula- 
tion, and  hence  must  lead  to  an  increase  of  wages,  which  in  turn 
will  heighten  the  cost  of  German  articles  of  export.  This,  put 
in  a  few  words,  is  the  gist  of  the  matter;  and  it  will  be  of  great 
interest  to  the  rest  of  the  world  to  watch  the  outcome  of  this 
struggle  in  Germany  between  the  mediseval  forces  of  her  landed 
and  titled  proprietor  class  and  the  modern  forces  of  her  commerce 
and  industry.  For  the  final  result  will  either  greatly  handicap 
Germany  in  her  race  with  other  nations  or  else  remove  a  serious 
obstacle  from  her  path. 

Striking  a  sort  of  general  balance,  therefore,  in  the  matter  of 
Germany's  weakness  and  strength  as  a  world  power,  there  seem 


U  GERMANY 

to  be,  just  at  this  juncture  in  the  world's  affairs,  more  points  that 
tell  against  her  than  for  her.  Her  old-time  military  preeminence, 
while  it  renders  her  position  secure  at  home,  as  against  the 
Continental  powers  of  Europe,  cannot  win  for  her  that  amount 
of  strategical  advantage  and  safety  on  the  ocean  and  on  foreign 
coasts  which,  as  an  exporting  world  power,  she  absolutely  needs 
to  safeguard  her  against  the  vicissitudes  of  the  future.  Her 
navy,  required  to  back  up  her  sea  trade,  will  be,  for  the  next  ten 
years,  in  a  transition  stage.  If  left  undisturbed  to  work  out 
this  transformation,  and  if  the  other  leading  naval  powers  da 
not  imitate  her  example,  she  will  in  1910  or  thereabouts  be  a 
sea  power  only  less  formidable  than  England,  and  equal  or 
superior  to  France.  But  England,  it  must  be  remembered, 
stands  committed  to  the  professed  policy  of  maintaining  a  naval 
superiority  on  the  basis  of  being  able  to  cope  at  any  time  with 
a  possible  naval  combination  between  France,  Russia  and 
Germany.  Germany's  serviceable  Baltic  Canal,  enabling  her 
navy  to  concentrate,  at  any  time  and  within  a  couple  of  days,  in 
either  the  German  Ocean  or  the  Baltic,  has  given  the  young 
empire,  on  the  other  hand,  a  great  tactical  advantage  over  both 
Russia  and  France,  the  configuration  of  whose  coasts  does  not 
permit  of  such  concentration,  and  even  to  some  extent  over 
England,  whose  vast  coast  development  and  widely  scattered 
colonial  interests  admit  of  no  such  massing  of  all  her  naval 
resources. 

But  even  if  left  to  reap  the  fruits  of  her  wise  and  far-sighted 
naval  policy,  Germany  would  not  be  strong  enough  to  stand, 
so  to  speak,  on  her  own  naval  bottom.  The  necessity  remains 
for  her  to  make  sure  in  time  of  at  least  one  other  strong  naval 
power  as  a  friend. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    KAISER   AS    HE    IS 

No  monarch  of  modern  times  has  been  so  misunderstood  as 
the  German  Emperor,  and  about  none  has  public  opinion  the 
world  over  so  wavered.  In  an  age  full  of  virile,  powerful  men 
who  in  different  spheres  of  human  effort  are  achieving  miracles, 
the  Emperor  stands  out  boldly — surely  a  strong  proof  that  the 
man  amounts  to  something.  The  world  over,  his  name  has 
appeared  daily,  now  as  a  menace,  now  as  that  of  a  strong-armed 
friend.  No  features  are  more  widely  known  than  the  firmly  set 
jaw  and  upturned  mustaches  of  the  Kaiser.  And  yet  no  one 
knew  the  German  Emperor  himself,  nor  could  any  one  tell  what 
he  would  do  next.  His  own  people  have  ceased  to  wonder, 
and  accept  his  will  as  eternal  law,  and  the  other  Europeans  have 
become  accustomed  to  believe  that  however  mad  he  seems  there 
is  always  method  in  his  acts.  His  picturesqueness,  a  penchant 
for  saying  and  doing  the  dramatic  thing,  his  frank  strenuousness, 
all  the  sides  of  the  man  which  gave  him  an  appearance  of  attitud- 
inizing are  seen  to  be  natural.  When  Bismarck  had  been  dis- 
missed, when  the  civilized  world  stood  aghast,  and  Punch  came 
out  with  a  cartoon  showing  the  German  ship  of  state  in  troubled 
waters  and  the  weatherbeaten  old  helmsman  turned  away  from 
the  wheel,  with  the  words  below,  "What  next?" — then  it  was 
that  the  Emperor  wrote  to  the  Grand  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar,  his 
great-uncle,  "As  to  the  rest,  the  same  course  will  be  steered  and 
God  with  us. "  This  showed  a  self-confidence  which  at  that 
time  struck  many  in  and  out  of  Germany  as  little  short  of  fool- 
hardiness,  if  not  sacrilege. 

Since  then  comment  and  wonder  at  his  doings,  his  sayings 
and  his  aims  have  never  ceased,  and  at  no  time  has  he  been  any- 
thing else  than  an  intensely  picturesque  personage,  a  man  who 
has  continually  given  both  friends  and  foes  something  to  think 
about,  to  wax  indignant  over  or  to  praise  with  enthusiasm.  One 

15 


16  GERMANY 

day  he  has  been  declared  a  transcendent  genius  by  some  who 
pointed  to  a  real  or  imaginary  success  scored  by  him  on  the  chess- 
board of  international  statecraft ;  the  next  day  men  have  com- 
pared him  to  a  vaporing  fool  or  to  a  blatant  advertising  agent, 
when  lo !  this  kaleidoscopic  character  would  appear  in  yet  an- 
other light.  Thus  the  public  judgment  of  him  has  never  crys- 
tallized, and  it  is  to-day  in  as  unsettled  a  condition  as  ever.  He 
has  held  a  larger  share  of  public  attention  in  England  and  in 
America  than  any  German  ruler  since  the  days  of  Frederick  the 
Great;  and  it  is  quite  safe  to  say  that  he  has  fairly  hypnotized 
the  Gallic  mind.  Thus,  then,  at  home  and  abroad  the  Kaiser 
compels  and  invites  criticism  and  comment;  and  proof  of  the 
difficulty  of  judging  him  fairly  is  given  by  the  fact  that  there  is 
as  much  diversity  of  opinion  regarding  him  among  the  persons 
of  his  immediate  entourage  as  there  is  outside  of  that  circle. 

His  is  an  unusually  complex  mind.  He  himself  proclaimed 
on  a  memorable  occasion  "I  am  an  'up-to-date'  man";  and  in 
many  respects  this  is  true.  More  than  any  other  living  monarch 
he  shows  appreciation  of  and  interest  in  the  ever-increasing  vic- 
tories of  applied  science  in  the  material  world.  New  and  start- 
ling inventions  and  discoveries  and  improvements,  in  medicine, 
in  electrotechnics,  in  shipbuilding,  in  telegraphy,  in  the  postal 
service,  receive  his  instant  and  enthusiastic  appreciation  and 
help,  and  he  spares  neither  time,  pains  nor  influence  to  appropri- 
ate them  for  the  nation  whose  head  he  is.  "Die  Welt  steht  im 
Zeichen  des  Verkehrs"  (i.e.,  this  is  an  era  of  rapid  transit)  was 
another  oft-quoted  saying  of  his.  Perhaps  the  most  significant 
motto,  however,  was  the  one  which  he  adopted  while  still  a  boy, 
during  the  days  he  went  to  the  public  school  in  Cassel — his 
" Rast'  ich,  so  rosf  ich"  ("  If  I  rest  I  rust"),  which  gives  the  key- 
note to  his  restless  energy — a  restlessness  so  much  at  variance 
with  the  typical  German  character  as  to  have  started  those  never- 
ending  rumours  of  his  mental  unsoundness.  That  he  is  of  a 
highly  nervous  temperament  is  undeniable,  and  besides  the 
exalted  conception  he  holds  of  his  duties  as  a  ruler  and  a  Hohen- 
zollern,  this  nervous  concentration  is  largely  responsible  for  his 
incessant  activity.  "  Toujours  en  vedette"  is  another  motto 
often  quoted  by  the  Emperor  in  conversation.  It  is  not  only 
the  army  and  navy  and  the  foreign  policy  of  Germany  that  he 


THE  KAISER  AS  HE  IS  17 

steadily  and  powerfully  influences  and  shapes,  but  also  the  arts 
and  the  sciences,  the  commerce  and  the  industry,  the  press  and 
the  pulpit  of  the  empire.  Nothing  in  the  world  escapes  him. 
With  an  alertness  and  intuitive  foresight  truly  wonderful  he 
seizes  upon  every  advanced  step  taken  anywhere,  and  if  possible 
he  utilizes  all  new  knowledge.  He  clearly  recognizes  the  force 
of  public  sentiment,  of  that  elusive  element  in  politics  which 
Bismarck,  the  teacher  of  his  early  manhood,  termed  the  im- 
ponderabilia  of  statecraft.  Witness  his  despatch  to  Kruger  after 
the  Jameson  raid,  or  per  contra,  the  telegram  to  Kipling  during 
the  latter's  illness,  and  the  audience  he  granted  to  Cecil  Rhodes. 
But,  while  in  all  these  respects  he  is,  in  very  truth,  a  thoroughly 
modern  man,  he  is  as  pronounced  a  reactionary,  a  man  of 
the  past,  in  other  essentials.  With  one  foot  he  stands  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  the  century  of  Louis  XV  and  absolutism ; 
and  with  the  other  he  touches  the  twentieth  century,  the  century 
of  electricity  and  of  an  untrammeled  press.  In  his  political 
creed  he  is  his  grandfather's  son,  not  his  father's.  He  is  an 
autocrat  by  belief,  by  training,  by  temperament,  and  not  a 
constitutional  monarch.  He  wishes  to  rule  as  well  as  to  govern. 
He  believes  neither  in  a  free  people  nor  a  free  press.  He  scorns 
the  good  old  democratic  motto,  Laissez  faire,  laissez  alter;  and 
he  believes  in  the  theory  and  the  practice  of  his  ancestor  Fred- 
erick William  I,  viz.,  to  beat  his  people  into  happiness  and  pros- 
perity. He  profoundly  believes  in  the  divine  right  of  kings  and 
in  the  providential  character  of  his  own  mission.  He  believes, 
with  Charles  I,  that  a  monarch  can  do  no  wrong,  and  that  he, 
with  all  the  other  rulers  by  inheritance  and  divine  right,  is 
fashioned  of  a  different  and  better  clay  than  his  subjects.  He 
believes  in  paternalism  and  enlightened  despotism,  and  not  in 
parliamentary  rule,  nor  in  constitutional  barriers  to  his  own 
will.  And  he  believes  in  all  these  so  thoroughly  and  firmly 
that  ever  since  his  accession  to  the  throne  he  has,  on  many 
public  occasions,  given  full  expression  to  these  beliefs,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  the  press  and  the  enlightened  public 
opinion  of  the  world,  to  which  in  other  respects  he  pays  assidu- 
ous attention,  has  condemned,  and  continues  to  condemn,  such 
utterances,  which  from  the  mouth  of  an  enlightened  nation's 
chief  sound  doubly  monstrous  and  antiquated. 


i8      .  GERMANY 

To  quote  a  few  such  sayings  of  the  Kaiser's,  I  will  mention  his 
Suprema  lex  regis  voluntas,  which  he  wrote  into  the  Golden  Book 
of  Munich  during  a  visit  there;  his  "One  only  is  Master  within 
the  empire,  and  I  will  tolerate  no  other,"  which  he  proclaimed 
in  the  presence  of  the  Rhenish  Provincial  Chamber;  his  "My 
course  is  the  right  one,  and  I  shall  continue  to  steer  it,"  which 
he  remarked  on  February  24,  1892;  and  in  still  a  stronger  form 
"There  is  but  one  law,  and  that  is  My  law,"  which  he  told  the 
recruits  in  1893;  and  his  Sic  volo,  sic  jubeo,  which  he  wrote 
in  strongly  marked  characters  under  his  own  portrait,  when 
presenting  it  to  the  conference  hall  in  the  Ministry  of  Public 
Worship  in  Berlin.  These  are  a  few  well-authenticated  expres- 
sions by  the  Kaiser  of  the  many  of  similar  import  that  could  be 
cited.  They  all  breathe  the  same  spirit — the  spirit  of  autocracy. 

A  very  interesting  parallel  might  be  drawn  between  the 
present  Kaiser  and  his  great-uncle  on  the  paternal  side,  King 
Frederick  William  IV,  that  unfortunate  but  brilliantly  endowed 
monarch,  who  finally  died  a  lingering  death  from  softening  of 
the  brain.  He  loved  literature,  the  arts  and  sciences,  and  he 
did  much  to  foster  them  and  to  draw  men  of  renown  to  his  court. 
Theoretically,  he  loved  enlightenment  in  the  political  life  of  his 
people;  but  in  his  heart  he  remained  a  hide-bound  absolutist, 
who  scorned,  in  1848,  after  the  political  revolution  had  tempo- 
rarily been  successful  throughout  Germany  and  Austria,  the 
Imperial  Crown,  offered  to  him  solemnly  by  the  spokesmen  and 
elected  representatives  of  the  whole  nation,  simply  because  this 
offer  was  a  popular  and  not  a  dynastic  one.  He  decried  the 
Prussian  constitution  after  it  had  been  forced  upon  him,  as  a 
"piece  of  paper  which  would  come  between  himself  and  his 
people";  but,  after  the  popular  uprising  in  Berlin  had  been 
successful,  and  the  fighting  in  the  streets  had  led  to  the  with- 
drawal of  all  the  troops  from  the  Prussian  capital,  this  won- 
derful monarch  went  with  bared  head  behind  the  coffins  of  those 
carried  to  burial  who  had  been  shot  down  behind  barricades 
by  the  regular  troops  at  his  own  orders.  He  was  an  odd  char- 
acter, this  great-uncle  of  the  Kaiser,  and  there  are  many  points 
of  striking  resemblance  between  the  two;  but,  after  all,  the 
Kaiser  is  essentially  a  man  of  action,  while  Frederick  William 
IV  was  a  man  of  brilliant  thought,  but  of  halting  and  timid 


THE  KAISER  AS  HE  IS  19 

action.  As  to  the  mental  state  of  the  Kaiser,  he  is,  of  course, 
perfectly  sane,  and  all  the  contradictory  features  in  him  may 
be  accounted  for  by  the  complexity  of  his  nature  and  by  his 
impulsive  temperament,  which  often  carries  him  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment  further  than  he  would  go  in  cooler  moments. 
Sometimes,  too,  intoxicants  acting  on  a  high-strung  and  naturally 
nervous  constitution  may  be  responsible  for  many  of  the  ex- 
treme and  apparently  irrational  things  that  he  has  said.  I 
have  heard  now  and  then,  during  my  residence  in  Berlin,  from 
the  lips  of  honorable  and  truthful  army  officers,  remarks  of  this 
kind  which  the  Kaiser  had  made  at  or  after  an  officers'  banquet, 
which  sounded  perfectly  insane,  but  which  were  readily  ac- 
counted for  by  the  fact  that  he  was  flushed  with  wine. 

Another  peculiar  bent  of  his  mind  concerns  the  Socialists. 
He  has  an  unreasoning  fear  and  hatred  of  them.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  in  Germany  the  Socialists  are  the  great  bulk 
of  the  mechanics  and  the  best  of  the  whole  labouring  population, 
and  that  they  are  quiet,  law-abiding,  peaceable  folk; that  their 
political  programme  to-day  is  in  the  main  nothing  worse  than 
that  of  a  radical  reform  party,  and  that  there  is  a  large  pro- 
portion of  them  who  are  even  royalists.  These  Socialists  polled 
at  the  last  general  election  some  2,170,000  votes,  which  is  about 
twice  the  voting  strength  of  any  other  political  party  in  the 
empire.  Yet  so  unreasoning  and  unreasonable  is  the  antipathy 
of  the  Kaiser  to  this  large  fraction  of  the  nation  that  he  referred 
to  them  in  a  throne  speech  as  a  "horde  of  men  unworthy  to  bear 
the  name  of  Germans."  He  has,  on  many  other  occasions, 
insulted  these  men  and  their  families  in  the  grossest  and  most 
unjust  manner,  and  he  has  frequently  provoked  them  in  a  most 
despicable  way.  He  has  harangued  regiments,  telling  them 
that  it  would  be  their  duty,  if  there  ever  was  another  popular 
uprising,  to  shoot  down  the  rioters,  even  if  their  own  mothers, 
fathers,  brothers  and  sisters  were  among  them.  And  his  courts 
then  sentence  some  of  these  same  Socialists,  when  they  have 
said  something  not  quite  to  the  Kaiser's  liking,  to  terms  in  prison 
during  which  many  have  died.  This  hatred  is  constantly 
whetted  and  heightened  by  irresponsible  advisers  and  cronies, 
and  it  forms  one  of  the  chief  hindrances  in  Germany 
to  a  more  liberal  political  era.  For  the  Kaiser  needs  only 


20  GERMANY 

to  be  told  that  some  projected  measure  is  likely  to  strengthen 
the  Socialist  party  to  condemn  that  measure.  At  the  root  of 
the  paramount  influence  of  that  old  fossil  of  mediaeval  times, 
the  so-called  Conservative  party  in  Prussia,  lies  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  the  Kaiser's  fear  of  a  popular  uprising  under 
Socialist  leadership.  For  Germany  this  is  most  deplorable, 
since  it  hinders  all  political  progress,  and  has  weakened  liberal 
political  aspirations  and  movements  enormously. 

Intimately  allied  with  his  incessant  fear  of  the  Socialist  party 
is  the  Kaiser's  blind  confidence  in  his  army.  Yet  at  least  thirty 
per  cent,  of  the  army  is  composed  of  the  sons  of  Socialists,  them- 
selves usually  already  confirmed  in  that  faith.  Of  the  petty 
officers,  too,  many  are  Socialists,  or  sympathizers  with  them. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  if  another  political  or  social  revolution 
should  occur  in  Germany — the  chance  of  such  a  thing  is  very 
small — the  army  would  not  play  the  part  of  a  blind  instrument 
in  drowning  such  an  uprising  in  a  deluge  of  blood.  The  officers 
of  the  army  to-day  are  different  from  the  officers  of  fifteen  years 
ago.  Formerly  the  great  majority  of  them  came  from  the  ranks 
of  the  nobility.  Now  about  seventy  per  cent,  are  the  sons  of 
plain,  though  well-to-do,  citizens.  The  Kaiser  for  a  time  tried 
to  stem  this  rising  influx  of  what  he  considered  "undesirable 
elements,"  but  he  had  to  yield  in  the  end,  for  with  the  increas- 
ing poverty  of  the  ruling  castes,  and  with  the  army  doubled  in 
size  since  1870,  there  is  no  remedy. 

The  Emperor  has  a  strong  dislike  of  the  press.  It  is  mainly 
owing  to  his  own  influence  that  that  very  modest  measure  of 
comparative  liberty  which  the  German  press  enjoyed  under  his 
grandfather  and  his  father  has  been  curtailed,  until  even  the 
semblance  of  it  has  almost  disappeared.  The  principal  reason 
for  the  Emperor's  antipathy  to  the  press  is  his  personal  experi- 
ence, especially  during  the  first  five  years  of  his  reign,  when 
public  opinion  was  considerably  prejudiced  against  him.  It  so 
happens  that  the  Kaiser  is  inordinately  vain,  and  extremely 
susceptible  to  criticism,  and  impatient  of  it.  He  fears  and  hates 
particularly  the  English  and  the  American  press  because  it  ex- 
erts an  enormous  influence  upon  the  opinion  of  the  world,  his 
own  country  included,  and  is  outspoken  and  energetic.  The 
French  papers  he  cares  little  about,  because  their  political 


THE  KAISER  AS  HE  IS  21 

opinions  on  any  non-French  topics  or  persons  are  held  of  little 
account  outside  of  France.  Besides,  no  German  emperor  has 
the  right  to  expect  anything  but  abuse  from  his  hereditary  foe. 
The  German  press  is  securely  and  effectually  muzzled,  and  the 
few  editors  or  correspondents  who  now  and  then  kick  over  the 
traces  are  silenced.  The  rest  of  the  European  press  does  not 
count  for  much,  but  the  English  and  the  American  press,  power- 
ful, wealthy,  enterprising  and  fearless,  has  always  been  a  great 
thorn  in  his  side.  He  minds  the  English  leading  papers  more 
than  the  American,  for  obvious  reasons.  But  of  late,  since  the 
United  States  has  developed  an  unexpected  military,  naval  and 
political  strength  and  commercial  supremacy,  he  devotes  much 
greater  attention  to  its  press  than  he  formerly  did. 

How  does  the  Kaiser  regard  the  United  States  ?  He  is  neither 
an  especial  friend  of  this  nation  nor  is  he  its  inveterate  foe,  which, 
since  the  spring  of  1898,  a  large  portion  of  the  American  press  has 
represented  him  and  a  large  part  of  the  American  people  be- 
lieved him  to  be.  He  learned  from  Bismarck  a  lesson  or  two — 
this  among  others,  that  a  statesman  must  reckon  with  con- 
crete facts,  however  unpalatable.  The  war  with  Spain  showed 
the  United  States  much  stronger  than  the  Kaiser  or  anybody 
else  in  Europe  had  any  idea  of.  Moreover,  the  dominant  party 
in  the  United  States  stands  committed  to  a  policy  of  expansion, 
political  and  commercial;  this  fact  was  fully  and  at  an  early 
date  recognized  by  the  Emperor,  and  he  has  since  shaped  his 
own  policy  accordingly.  He  now  earnestly  seeks  a  rapproche- 
ment. His  sending  his  brother  over  here  was  but  the  latest  and 
most  striking  proof.  Yet  it  is  quite  natural  that  he  should  not 
like  the  American.  A  man  of  his  political  views,  believing  in  a 
government  by  divine  right,  in  a  strong  government  based 
on  the  army  and  on  the  inherited  prerogative  of  the  privileged 
castes  to  rule,  cannot  sincerely  like  a  government  which  is  of 
the  people,  by  the  people  and  for  the  people.  The  Kaiser  and 
the  upper  and  ruling  classes  in  Germany  look  upon  the  United 
States  as  little  better  than  a  "mob  government." 

I  collected,  during  my  stay  in  Berlin,  a  few  authentic  utter- 
ances made  by  the  Kaiser  about  this  country.  To  the  late 
General  Runyon,  then  United  States  ambassador  in  Berlin, 
he  once  said:  "Such  a  pushing  people  as  the  Americans  will 


22  GERMANY 

sooner  or  later  clash  with  others,  but  let  us  hope  never  with 
Germany." 

To  Ambassador  White  he  said:  "America  is  a  country  of 
contrasts — piercing  lights  and  deep  shadows."  And  on  another 
occasion:  "I  know  there  are  many  things  my  Germans  might 
learn  from  the  American  people,  above  all,  their  optimism,  their 
almost  naive  enthusiasm,  and  unquenchable  energy." 

To  the  late  ex-President  Harrison  he  said  in  the  course  of 
an  hour's  conversation:  "Your  whole  country  is  an  experi- 
ment— an  intensely  interesting  one,  I  admit,  but  still  an 
experiment.  Whether  it  will  stand  the  storms  of  time  as  the 
older  monarchies  of  Europe  have  done  remains  still  to  be 
seen." 

To  the  same:  "One  of  the  doubtful  features  of  American 
life  is  its  lack  of  national  cohesion  and  homogeneity — you're  a 
conglomerate,  a  bubbling  caldron." 

To  the  same:  "Such  seething  party  politics  as  yours  are  not 
conducive  to  a  calm,  well-balanced  public  opinion." 

These  remarks  are  interesting  enough,  some  of  them,  but 
taken  altogether  they  hardly  show  enthusiasm  for  democratic 
institutions.  The  Kaiser,  indeed,  has  affection  and  cordial  good 
wishes  for  only  one  other  nation  than  his  own,  and  that  is  the 
English.  His  English  blood,  the  strong  English  influences  and 
family  ties  felt  all  his  life,  and  his  many  visits  to  England  easily 
account  for  this  interest.  He  once  said  in  speaking  of  the 
English:  "Blood  is  thicker  than  water."  But  the  English  free 
press  he  does  not  like,  as  witness  two  sayings  of  his  to  Sir  Frank 
Lascelles,  the  British  ambassador  in  Berlin:  "An  unbridled 
press  is  a  curse  for  any  nation — liberty  does  not  mean  license," 
and  on  another  occasion:  "Scribblers  and  libelers  are  not 
journalists." 

To  Count  Szoegenyi,  the  Austrian  ambassador,  he  expressed 
some  harsh  criticism  of  parliamentarism.  He  spoke  of  the 
recent  violent  scenes  in  the  Reichsrath  in  Vienna  as 
"Parliamentarism  run  to  seed,"  and  again,  "Parliamentarism 
is  a  double-edged  sword  which  nowadays  seems  to  do  more 
harm  than  good." 

On  another  occasion  he  said  to  the  same:  "It's  not  talk-talk-talk, 
but  do-do-do  that  legislative  bodies  ought  to  be  chiefly  engaged  in." 


23 

And  to  Count  Osten-Sacken,  the  Russian  ambassador,  he 
szud:  "After  all,  it's  the  monarch  alone  who  gives  stability  to 
a  nation's  politics."  And  on  another  occasion:  "Monarchy  like 
ours  in  Prussia  is,  in  critical  times,  the  nation's  sole  salvation." 


CHAPTER    III 
THE   KAISER'S    PERSONAL    INFLUENCE 

IT  is  an  attractive  task  to  lay  bare  the  various  sources  of  the 
extraordinary  influence  exerted  by  the  German  Emperor  upon 
the  public  life  of  the  nation  he  rules.  The  world  knows  this 
influence  to  be  very  strong,  but  relatively  little  is  generally  under- 
stood as  to  whence  it  is  derived.  When  one  compares  the  actual 
power  wielded  by  the  present  Emperor  with  that  possessed  by  his 
grandfather,  one  is  struck  with  the  fact  that  though  William  I, 
as  the  founder  of  the  united  empire  and  as  the  successful  leader 
in  two  great  wars,  naturally  enjoyed  a  much  greater  prestige 
than  did  his  grandson  at  the  outset  of  his  reign,  yet  he  never 
attained  to  that -measure  of  paramount  authority  which  William 
II  may  justly  claim  to-day.  The  undeniably  greater  ability 
of  the  latter  does  not  alone  explain  this,  nor  does  the  disparity 
in  character  between  the  two  rulers.  There  are  other  forces  at 
work. 

The  constitution  of  the  empire,  on  which  the  lawful  power 
and  prerogatives  of  the  head  of  the  nation  exclusively  rest,  does 
not  confer  on  him  a  great  abundance  of  either — hardly  as  much, 
in  fact,  as  the  constitution  of  this  country  delegates  to  the 
President.  It  divides  the  power  of  the  empire  as  such  between 
the  Kaiser,  the  Bundesrath  or  Federal  Council,  and  the  Reichstag 
or  National  Parliament.  It  makes  the  Kaiser  chief  commander 
of  the  military  and  naval  forces ;  it  invests  him  with  the  right  of 
representing  the  empire  on  all  occasions  in  its  dealings  with 
foreign  countries  and  their  ambassadors  and  ministers,  and  of 
declaring  war  and  concluding  peace.  But  it  grants  the  Kaiser  no 
veto  power  to  block  unwise  or  unwelcome  legislation,  such  as  the 
President  of  the  United  States  possesses ;  neither  does  it  give  him 
the  duty  or  power  to  interfere  in  the  internal  affairs  of  any  of  the 
German  States  save  the  one  whose  monarch  he  is,  making  him  in 
every  respect,  excepting  those  specified  above,  merely  primus 

24 


THE    KAISER'S    PERSONAL   INFLUENCE       25 

inter  pares.  The  Btmdesrath  and  the  Reichstag  are  jointly  en- 
trusted with  the  right  of  legislating  for  the  empire,  of  framing, 
altering  and  passing  bills  which  after  approval  by  both  bodies 
become  laws,  although  the  Imperial  Government  may,  and  gener- 
ally does,  prepare  and  submit  such  bills,  and  these,  of  course, 
may  more  or  less  accurately  reflect  the  personal  wishes  of  the 
Kaiser.  But  it  is  at  all  times  within  the  province  of  these  two 
bodies  to  thwart  the  Kaiser  in  the  matter  of  legislation. 

The  Bundesrath,  particularly,  is  an  organization  whose  func- 
tions are,  on  the  whole,  as  denned  by  the  constitution,  nearly  if 
not  quite  as  important  as  those  of  the  Kaiser.  Its  fifty-eight 
members  are  appointed  by  the  governments  of  the  twenty-six 
sovereign  States  which  together  compose  the  Empire;  and  its 
powers  are  not  only  legislative,  like  those  of  the  Reichstag,  but 
within  certain  limits  supervisory  and  administrative  as  well.  It 
also  belongs  exclusively  to  the  Bundesrath  to  devise  and  set  in 
force  the  rules  and  regulations  for  the  execution  of  all  laws. 
Prussia  is  represented  within  the  Bundesrath  by  but  seventeen 
out  of  the  fifty-eight  members,  so  that  the  Kaiser,  even  as  King  of 
Prussia,  apparently  cannot  sway  the  deliberations  and  decisions 
of  this  body. 

The  other  branch  of  the  legislative  organization  of  the  empire, 
the  Reichstag,  is  composed  of  three  hundred  and  ninety-seven 
members,  elected  by  general  franchise,  and  representing,  of 
course,  every  shade  of  political  opinion,  from  the  Socialist  creed 
to  the  most  reactionary  shade  of  belief  held  by  the  so-called 
Junker  party.  The  splitting-up  of  political  thought  in  Germany 
into  almost  a  score  of  parties  and  factions  would  in  itself  prevent 
the  complete  ascendancy  of  the  Imperial  will  within  this  body, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Imperial  Government  is  obliged  to 
win  over  a  majority  of  votes  for  every  measure  it  desires  passed. 
This  is  what  Bismarck  called  "  Politik  machen  von  Fall  zu  Fall, " 
and  about  which  he  continually  complained. 

Thus,  then,  in  theory,  the  power  of  the  Kaiser  to  guide  the 
legislation  and  administration  of  the  Empire  is  seriously  cur- 
tailed and,  to  some  extent,  even  handicapped.  But  in  practice 
this  is  true  in  a  much  less  degree.  As  to  the  Bundesrath,  though 
the  seventeen  Prussian  votes  directly  controlled  by  the  Kaiser  are 
less  than  one-third  of  the  total,  there  are  always  enough  votes 


26  GERMANY 

of  the  other  States  obtainable  to  give  Prussia,  which  means  the 
Kaiser,  the  majority.  For,  aside  from  the  fear  of  displeasing  the 
Kaiser,  a  sentiment  which  is  strong  in  the  bosoms  of  the  smaller 
States  and  their  rulers,  and  for  which  experience  has  furnished 
them  good  reason,  Prussia's  interests  in  any  pending  measure 
naturally  run  parallel  with  those  of  a  number  of  its  neighbours. 
And  the  great  weight  which  the  interests  of  a  State  must  naturally 
have  which  alone  forms  three-fifths  of  the  territory  and  contains 
two-thirds  of  the  population  of  the  empire,  will  be  the  decisive 
factor  in  many  otherwise  doubtful  cases.  At  any  rate,  it  is  a 
fact  that  the  Bundesrath,  ever  since  it  held  its  initial  session  in 
1871,  has  in  the  end  run  counter  to  the  Kaiser's  and  Prussia's 
serious  interests  in  not  a  single  instance. 

The  Reichstag  has  not  always  been  so  amenable  to  the  Kaiser's 
influence.  On  a  number  of  conspicuous  occasions  that  body 
has  rejected  measures  strongly  urged  by  the  Imperial  represen- 
tatives. Some  of  these  measures  have  been  definitely  dropped, 
while  others  have  again  made  their  appearance  and  been  passed, 
with  or  without  alterations,  as  was  the  case  with  several  of 
the  bills  for  the  increase  of  the  army  and  navy.  Nevertheless, 
the  Reichstag  has  always  been  recognized  by  the  Emperor  as  an 
uncertain  element  in  his  calculations,  and  as  one  which,  in  spite 
of  the  utmost  clever  manipulation,  can  never  be  depended  upon 
to  give  effect  to  his  wishes.  But  the  powers  of  the  Reichstag 
are  more  narrowly  circumscribed  than  those  of  the  Bundesrath; 
and  the  very  fact  that  this  body  is  composed  of  so  many  and  so 
heterogeneous  political  units  prevents  it  from  becoming  at  any 
time  a  very  formidable  adversary,  and  from  ever  presenting  a 
solid  front  against  Imperial  encroachments.  It  has,  besides, 
no  "patronage,"  so-called,  to  distribute  and  no  other  tangible 
favours  to  bestow,  and  its  hold  upon  the  confidence  and  affections 
of  the  nation  at  large  has  been  steadily  diminishing. 

The  opposition,  therefore,  which  the  Kaiser  has  met,  and  is 
likely  to  meet  in  the  future,  from  this  quarter  is  much  less 
serious  than  at  first  sight  would  appear  to  be  the  case.  The 
amount  of  this  possible  opposition,  however,  is  still  measurably 
decreased  by  the  personal  in^u^nce  of  the  Kaiser.  For  the 
Kaiser  strikingly  embodies  an  epitome  of  all  the  driving  forces  in 
the  German  character  of  to-day;  and  just  as  he  in  that  capacity 


THE  KAISER'S  PERSONAL  INFLUENCE        27 

exercises  a  well-nigh  mesmeric  influence  on  the  mind  and  imagi- 
nation of  the  nation,  so,  too,  he  does  on  its  representatives  in  the 
Reichstag.  His  masterful  ways,  and  the  forceful  and  picturesque 
manner  in  which  he  usually  presents  his  views  in  public,  greatly 
add  to  the  authority  of  his  personality.  But  he  has  still  other 
means  of  impressing  his  will.  Among  these  are  speeches  from 
the  throne.  These  public  enunciations,  which  in  other  countries 
are  mere  cut-and-dried  papers  to  which  little  attention  is  paid, 
are  really  meant  by  the  German  constitution  to  be  nothing  more. 
Under  the  present  Kaiser's  predecessors  they  were  nothing  more. 
They  were  read  in  a  perfunctory  manner,  precisely  as  worded  by 
the  Imperial  Chancellor.  But  William  II  did  not  follow  in  his 
grandfather's  footsteps  in  this  respect.  He  has  repeatedly  and 
in  a  dramatic  manner  disregarded  the  exact  wording,  and  even 
the  spirit  and  substance,  of  the  manuscript  prepared  for  him 
by  his  Chancellors,  and  strongly  infused  them  with  his  own  ideas 
and  opinions.  From  impersonal  and  unimpressive  documents, 
such  as  the  constitution  contemplated,  his  throne  speeches  have 
become  sensational  events,  reverberating  through  the  whole 
Empire,  and  stamping  in  advance  as  his  personal  opponents,  nay, 
enemies,  all  those  delegates  in  Reichstag  and  Diet  who  resist  the 
passage  of  the  measures  proposed  by  him.  The  receptions  the 
Kaiser  accords,  in  conformity  with  a  long-established  custom,  to 
the  presiding  officers  of  the  legislative  bodies,  and  which  under 
William  I  were  merely  formal,  are  regularly  turned  to  the  same 
account  by  the  present  Kaiser.  By  strong  and  eloquent  suasion 
on  these  occasions  the  Kaiser  has  several  times  turned  the  scale 
in  favour  of  important  measures. 

William  II  has  often  given  public  utterance  to  his  conviction 
that  the  most  potent  support  of  his  throne  is  the  army.  It  is  not 
surprising,  therefore,  that  he  has  steadily  aimed  at  keeping  that 
pillar  of  his  strength  perfectly  under  his  own  control.  In  doing 
this  he  has  made  use  of  every  available  means.  All  the  year 
round  finds  him  busy  attending  parades,  manoeuvres,  anniver- 
saries of  battles,  birthdays  of  sovereign  or  otherwise  distinguished 
chiefs  of  a  number  of  his  regiments,  and  delivering  speeches, 
toasts,  formal  or  impromptu  addresses,  in  which  he  never  fails  to 
inculcate  precepts  and  traditions  of  loyalty  and  of  every  other 
military  virtue,  seizing,  too,  opportunities  thus  afforded  him  to 


^8  GERMANY 

pay  compliments  to  the  heads  of  allied  or  friendly  nations,  or  to 
express  other  sentiments  likely  to  benefit  Germany  in  her  political 
relations.  Above  all,  though,  he  fraternizes  with  the  officers  of 
the  army  at  luncheons  or  banquets  given  at  their  barracks,  to 
which  he  invites  himself.  His  after-dinner  remarks  on  such 
occasions  have  often  astounded  the  world,  but  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  that  of  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army,  they  have 
b?en  highly  effective,  and  have  tended  to  knit  still  more  firmly 
the  bonds  which  unite  the  army  to  his  person.  Then  there  is  the 
entire  category  of  rewards  and  punishments  which  he,  as  head  of 
the  army,  dispenses  at  will — promotions,  orders  and  decorations, 
praise  or  censure  meted  out  to  individuals  or  bodies  in  army 
orders  and  bulletins,  confirmations,  revisions  or  nullifications  of 
sentences  imposed  by  courts-martial.  It  will  easily  be  under- 
stood that  these  varied  and  constantly  applied  means  alone  suf- 
fice to  make  the  influence  of  the  Kaiser  over  his  army  an  element 
of  surpassing  force.  But  to  all  this  must  be  added  the  power 
he  acquires  through  his  "Military  Cabinet."  This  is  a  bureau 
under  his  exclusive  control,  whose  mission  it  is  to  supply  him 
daily,  by  regular  verbal  or  written  reports,  with  that  wealth  of 
personal  details  about  his  army,  and  especially  about  the  corps 
of  officers,  which  enables  him  to  know  at  all  times  the  exact  spirit 
and  degree  of  efficiency  noticeable  in  each  regiment,  even  each 
company  or  squadron,  and  which  lends  to  his  personal  relations 
with  the  army  a  spice  of  intimacy  and  comprehensive  knowledge 
which  is  of  enormous  value.  It  is  credibly  asserted  that  the 
Kaiser  personally  knows  half  of  the  25,000  officers  in  the  German 
active  army. 

His  "Naval  Cabinet,"  whose  scope  of  duties  is  similar,  is 
largely  responsible  for  his  intimate  knowledge  of  the  ships  and 
men  composing  the  German  navy.  His  constant  visits  to  the 
naval  vessels  also  have  a  share  in  this,  and  it  is  probably  true  that 
he  knows  every  one  of  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-three  vessels 
and  1,500  naval  officers  under  his  command.  At  the  regular 
autumnal  manoeuvres  of  the  German  navy  he  has,  besides,  an 
opportunity  of  testing  the  mettle  of  his  ships  and  men. 

As  regards  the  citizen  population,  and  more  particularly  the 
immense  corps  of  government  officials,  his  "Civil  Cabinet,"  of 
which  Herr  von  Lucanus  is  the  dreaded  chief,  puts  him  in  a  posi- 


THE  KAISER'S  PERSONAL  INFLUENCE        29 

tion  to  acquire  a  great  deal  of  similarly  intimate  knowledge 
about  it.  Thousands  of  petitions,  letters  of  thanks,  special  re- 
ports, etc.,  reach  him  in  the  course  of  every  year  through  this 
"cabinet"  which  give  him  a  keen  insight  into  the  lives,  ambi- 
tions and  aims  of  the  middle  and  higher  classes.  The  peculiar 
passion  for  titles  and  decorations,  for  which  the  Germans  them- 
selves have  coined  the  word  "  Titelsucht,"  likewise  furnishes  the 
Kaiser  with  a  strong  lever  by  which  to  turn  people  at  will.  Every 
winter — on  January  i8th,  as  a  rule — the  so-called  "Ordensfest," 
or  Fete  of  Decorations,  is  celebrated  at  the  Berlin  court,  when 
between  5,000  and  8,000  newly  decorated  citizens,  drawn  from 
every  walk  of  life,  are  invited  to  court,  file  before  the  Kaiser  and 
his  consort,  and  are  subsequently  regaled  in  a  number  of  the 
most  splendid  apartments  of  the  Old  Castle,  and  affably  treated 
by  a  large  and  gorgeously  attired  body  of  flunkeys.  Thus  an 
indelibly  sweet  and  powerful  impression  is  left  on  the  minds  of 
this  heterogeneous  multitude,  largely  composed  of  unsophis- 
ticated and  intensely  loyal  denizens  of  rural  districts  or  smaller 
towns.  The  official  organ  of  the  empire  on  the  afternoon  of  that 
day  publishes  a  special  edition,  containing  on  a  score  of  quarto 
pages  the  full  names,  callings,  etc.,  of  all  these  happy  persons, 
together  with  a  minute  classification  of  the  decorations  and 
medals  awarded,  and  all  the  newspapers  in  the  empire  reprint 
the  list,  wholly  or  in  part.  The  present  Kaiser  has  used  this  quite 
inexpensive  but  very  effective  mode  of  rewarding  loyal  subjects 
with  steadily  increasing  lavishness,  and  has  invented  a  number  of 
new  decorations,  besides.  He  indulges  the  ambition  for  titles 
with  like  generosity  and  with  like  effect. 

By  vastly  increasing  the  splendours  of  his  court  the  Kaiser  has 
also  materially  heightened  his  personal  influence.  The  simple 
and  unostentatious  manners  and  customs  prevailing  at  the  Berlin 
court  during  the  days  of  William  I  have  been  superseded  by  an 
elaborateness  of  ceremonial,  a  brilliancy  of  appointments  and 
costumes,  and  a  display  of  taste  and  refined  luxury  which  rival, 
and  in  some  features  even  surpass,  the  elegancies  of  the  Tuileries 
under  Napoleon  III.  The  exterior  and  interior  of  Berlin  Castle, 
and  of  several  other  royal  homes  belonging  to  the  Prussian 
monarchs,  have  been  renovated  and  embellished,  and  connois- 
seurs claim  that  the  so-called  White  Hall  in  Berlin  Castle,  in  its 


30  GERMANY 

new  guise,  is  the  most  beautiful  and  chaste  extant.  The  ban- 
quets given  by  the  Kaiser  on  grand  days  enjoy  a  deservedly  high 
reputation  among  European  diplomats,  and  the  royal  cellars  are 
unequalled  to-day  in  any  capital.  The  pressure  to  attend  the 
Berlin  court  festivities  has  on  account  of  all  this  become  stronger 
every  year,  as  the  list  of  festivities  has  been  published  by  the 
chief  court  marshal,  and  even  many  distinguished  strangers  have 
strenuously  exerted  themselves  to  that  end.  But  in  like  ratio  has 
the  Kaiser's  tendency  increased  to  render  these  festivities  ex- 
clusive. 

All  these  means  used  by  the  Kaiser  to  extend  and  strengthen 
his  influence  on  every  class  of  the  population  are  legitimate. 
But  some  other  means  he  uses  are  open  to  serious  objection,  for 
they  amount  to  nothing  less  than  an  overriding  of  the  constitu- 
tion. It  was  Bismarck  who  drew  up  this  fundamental  instru- 
ment, and  it  contains  provisions  clearly  denning  not  alone  the 
powers  and  prerogatives  of  the  Emperor,  but  also  those  of  the 
Imperial  Chancellor.  One  of  these  provisions  is  to  the  effect 
that  every  public  utterance  by  the  Emperor,  oral  or  written, 
must  receive  the  sanction  of  the  Imperial  Chancellor  to  acquire 
the  character  of  a  government  emanation.  Without  that,  such 
utterances  are  to  be  considered  merely  as  private  enunciations, 
having  no  binding  force  on  the  sovereign,  the  government,  or 
the  nation.  The  constitution  provides  that  every  document 
signed  or  written  by  the  Emperor  in  his  public  capacity  must 
have  the  counter-signature  of  the  Imperial  Chancellor,  whereby 
he,  the  Chancellor,  assumes  the  responsibility  for  it  toward  the 
nation  and  its  representatives  in  Bundesrath  and  Reichstag,  and 
becomes  amenable  to  them.  Bismarck  in  his  Memoirs  says  that 
the  intent  was  to  render  the  Chancellor  alone  responsible,  he 
having  identified  himself  with  the  monarch's  act  or  expression 
by  his  signature,  and  thus  "shield"  the  sovereign;  the  further  in- 
ference being  that  if  it  becomes  manifest  at  any  time  that  the 
nation,  through  the  majority  of  its  representatives,  disapproves 
of  measures  or  opinions  thus  endorsed  by  the  Chancellor,  the 
sovereign  has  the  simple  remedy  of  dismissing  the  Chancellor 
and  appointing  a  successor — which  would  be  the  pure  parlia- 
mentary form  of  government. 

This  important  provision  of  the  German  constitution  has  been 


THE   KAISER'S   PERSONAL   INFLUENCE       31 

practically  nullified  by  the  Kaiser  for  many  years  past.  He  has 
declared  himself  in  favor  of  projects  or  pending  measures;  he 
has  proclaimed  a  new  policy,  or  an  important  alteration  in  an  old 
one;  he  has  launched  the  ship  of  state  into  the  troubled  waters 
of  a  dangerous  adventure,  without  even  first  consulting  with  his 
Chancellor.  This  he  did  throughout  the  Hohenlohe  regime,  and 
he  has  done  it  on  several  occasions  since  the  present  Chancellor 
came  into  power.  The  seizure  of  Kiaochou  was  a  step  under- 
taken not  alone  without  the  knowledge  of  the  Chancellor,  but 
directly  against  his  will.  If  Germany  at  that  time  had  become 
involved  in  war  with  China,  that  war  would  have  been  due  to  a 
flagrant  violation  of  the  constitution  by  the  Kaiser.  Public 
declarations  have  been  made  scores  of  times  by  the  Kaiser,  con- 
demning or  approving  men  and  measures,  without  previous  con- 
sultation with  his  Chancellors.  Yet,  while  thus  ignoring  the 
constitution  himself,  the  Kaiser  has,  when  such  utterances  of  his 
were  adversely  criticised,  taken  advantage  of  the  existing  very 
illiberal  judicial  practice,  in  prosecuting  such  critics  whom  he, 
on  a  conspicuous  occasion,  styled  "Norgler"  (fault-finder),  and 
whom  he  advised  to  "shake  the  dust  of  the  fatherland  off  their 
shoes."  If  these  utterances  of  his  had  been  made  with  the  con- 
sent, or  over  the  signature,  of  the  Imperial  Chancellor,  they 
would  have  become  fit  subjects  for  criticism  within  reasonable 
bounds.  But  by  this  doubly  unfair  proceeding  on  the  Kaiser's 
part  neither  the  Reichstag  nor  the  nation  at  large  is  permitted 
to  pronounce  public  judgment  on  his  sayings  and  doings. 

Again,  the  Kaiser  has,  contrary  to  the  constitution,  practically 
monopolized  the  direction  of  the  foreign  policy  of  Germany  for 
many  years — in  fact,  ever  since  the  retirement  of  Bismarck. 
The  empire's  foreign  policy,  by  the  explicit  terms  of  the  consti- 
tution, is  left  wholly  to  the  Chancellor.  If  the  Kaiser  be  not 
satisfied  with  the  Chancellor's  foreign  policy,  he  can  dismiss 
him.  But  the  Kaiser  found  it  more  to  his  taste  to  shape  the 
empire's  foreign  policy  entirely  according  to  his  own  ideas, 
making  the  Chancellor,  at  least  in  this  important  respect,  a 
mere  figurehead.  Bismarck,  with  whom  he  first  tried  these 
tactics,  would  not  submit  and  was  retired.  Caprivi,  a  soldier 
before  being  a  statesman,  and  regarding  the  Kaiser  solely  as  his 
commander-in-chief,  obeyed  blindly,  xlolicnlohe,  who  was  of  a 


32  GERMANY 

different  moral  and  intellectual  fibre,  disliked  being  thus  cava- 
lierly treated,  and  finally  resigned.  How  long  von  Buelow  will 
submit  to  this  treatment  remains  to  be  seen. 

These  are  the  two  most  important  features  in  which  the  Kaiser 
shows  a  studied  and  persistent  disregard  of  the  constitution. 
But  there  have  been  other  less  important  instances  in  which  he 
has  shown  small  respect  for  the  instrument  which  created  his 
position.  These  autocratic  doings  of  his  would,  in  other  coun- 
tries with  a  longer  past  of  constitutionalism,  be  a  most  dangerous 
defect.  But  in  Germany,  where  parliamentarism  is  an  impor- 
tation which  has  by  no  means  as  yet  been  as  firmly  established 
as  in  England,  France,  or  even  Italy,  these  absolutistic  tendencies 
of  the  Emperor  figure  not  nearly  so  prominently  in  the  people's 
eyes  as  one  might  think.  For  what  in  Germany  is  termed  the 
"monarchic  principle"  is  rooted  very  deep  in  the  heart  of  the 
nation  as  a  whole.  The  Socialists  are  the  only  exception ;  nearly 
all  the  rest  of  the  nation,  say  three-fourths  of  it,  is  intensely 
monarchic. 

But,  after  all,  it  is  the  personal  influence  of  the  Kaiser  which 
is  most  potent.  His  forceful  personality  simply  compels  atten- 
tion. For  years  after  his  accession  millions  of  Germans  stood 
aloof,  ignoring  his  kaleidoscopic  activity,  and  firmly  believing 
that  after  he  had  "sown  his  wild  oats,"  and  after  the  novelty 
of  the  situation  into  which  he  had  been  summoned  so  unex- 
pectedly had  worn  off,  he  would  cease  his  pyrotechnic  inter- 
ference in  every  phase  of  public  life.  But  these  would-be  "in- 
differents"  were  forced  to  abandon  their  attitude.  When,  after 
one  of  his  speeches,  often  ill-advised,  flamboyant  and  overshoot- 
ing the  mark,  but  always  striking  and  earnest,  the  press  of  the 
whole  world  would  be  ringing  with  comment,  and  at  every 
German  fireside  heated  discussions  pro  and  con  would  take  place, 
these  sober-minded  Germans,  while  still  condemning  his  methods, 
found  it  impossible  to  stand  supinely  aside.  The  Kaiser,  on 
every  weighty  problem  that  came  to  the  surface  for  solution, 
would  split  the  nation  into  two  hostile  camps,  stimulating  dis- 
cussion and  keeping  both  adherents  and  opponents  of  his  views 
at  fever  heat.  It  is  this  sensational  side  of  his  personal  in- 
fluence, probably  more  than  any  other,  which  has  been,  and  is 
still  being,  felt  most  strongly.  Into  every  political  campaign  in 


THE   KAISER'S   PERSONAL   INFLUENCE       33 

Germany  he  has  thrown  firebrands  in  the  shape  of  mottoes, 
pithy  and  apt  sayings,  sarcastic  allusions,  or  ironical  retorts  to 
his  adversaries.  Every  weapon  of  warfare  has  been  success- 
fully employed  by  him. 

When  the  Kaiser  disapproved  of  the  violent  Agrarian  agitation 
in  1894,  he  coined  the  phrase:  "You  cannot  expect  me  to 
sanction  bread  usury. "  And  the  phrase  flew  like  wildfire  all 
over  Germany.  When  he  dedicated  the  important  Baltic-North 
Sea  Canal,  he  said:  "Oceans  unite;  they  do  not  sever."  And, 
similarly:  "The  world's  present  motto  is,  'Easy  Communica- 
tion. "  When  he  considered  it  necessary  to  check  the  advancing 
tide  of  Socialism,  he  spoke  of  the  Socialist  party,  numerically  the 
largest  in  his  Empire,  as:  "A  horde  of  men  unworthy  to  bear  the 
name  of  Germans."  And  the  bitter  words  still  rankle  in  the 
breast  of  every  German  Socialist.  When  he  rebuked  the  Ultra- 
montane Centre  party  for  refusing  to  do  honour  to  Bismarck  on 
his  eightieth  birthday,  he  said:  "This  is  a  national  disgrace,  un- 
equalled in  modern  history.  "  When  he  had  veered  around  in  his 
ideas  on  the  Agrarian  question,  he  said:  "Agriculture  is  the  back- 
bone of  the  country,  and  it  must  be  protected. "  He  coined  the 
phrase  about  the  "  Greater  Germany, "  and  said:  "  Our  future  lies 
upon  the  water";  and,  more  strongly:  "Without  the  consent  of 
Germany's  ruler,  nothing  must  happen  in  any  part  of  the  world.  " 
His  sayings  about  the  "mailed  fist,  "  about  "planting  the  banner 
of  Germany  upon  the  walls  of  Pekin,  "  about  the  "yellow  danger," 
and  all  the  other  highly  coloured  and  startling  sentences  descrip- 
tive of  his  conception  of  the  situation  in  China,  are  still  in  every- 
body's recollection. 

Now  and  then  he  has  been  checkmated,  or  even  defeated  out- 
right. The  several  attempts  made  by  him  to  bring  about  anti- 
Socialist  legislation  have  been  foiled.  The  great  Reichstag 
election  of  1898  went  strongly  against  him,  and  this  despite  his 
vigorous  interference,  and  brought  an  increase  of  strength  to  the 
Socialists.  Both  the  Reichstag  and  the  Diet  refused,  in  the  face 
of  the  Kaiser's  urgings,  to  pass  laws  (the  so-called  "Lex  Hcinze" 
and  "Lex  Arons")  which  would  virtually  have  throttled  the 
remnant  of  public  and  private  freedom  of  speech  and  thought, 
though  in  this  fight  he  had  the  Centre  with  him  and  nearly  the 
solid  Conservative  faction.  The  Diet,  on  two  conspicuous  occa- 


34  GERMANY 

sions,  and  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  Kaiser  had  publicly, 
repeatedly  and  in  emphatic  language  pledged  himself  personally 
in  favour  of  it,  refused  to  sanction  the  construction  of  the 
Midland  Canal. 

These  are  important  and  far-reaching  measures  in  which  he  was 
worsted,  but  he  had  a  like  experience  on  many  minor  occasions. 
A  conspicuous  instance  was  the  struggle  between  the  Kaiser  and 
the  Prince-Regent  of  Lippe,  ruler  of  a  small  state  comprising 
but  1,215  square  kilometres,  with  a  total  population  of  139,000. 
The  regent  of  this  petty  principality  had  been,  prior  to  his  ac- 
cession, a  mere  count  of  modest  means  and  a  major  in  the 
Prussian  army.  Yet  in  his  earnest  attempt  to  unseat  this  ruler 
of  an  unimportant  fragment  of  the  empire,  the  Kaiser  was 
signally  defeated;  and  as  his  object  had  been  to  supplant  Prince 
Ernest  by  his  (the  Kaiser's)  brother-in-law,  Prince  Adolph  of 
Schaumburg- Lippe,  and  as  the  committee  of  arbitration  deciding 
against  him  had  been  presided  over  by  the  Kaiser's  friend,  the 
late  King  Albert  of  Saxony,  this  defeat  was  all  the  more  galling. 

However,  despite  occasional  rebuffs,  the  Kaiser,  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  has  had  his  way,  and  is  likely  to  have  it  in  the  future. 
His  influence  to-day  is  felt  more  strongly  than  that  of  any  other 
single  factor  in  Germany.  In  some  ways  this  has  been  beneficial 
to  Germany.  It  has  led  to  the  adoption  of  a  most  comprehen- 
sive plan  of  naval  increase.  It  has  infused  more  enterprise  and 
self-confidence  into  the  nation.  It  has  inaugurated  Germany's 
world  policy.  Despite  the  fact  that  the  nation  gave  undue 
prominence  to  sentimental  considerations  during  the  Spanish 
and  the  Boer  wars,  and  thereby  embittered  relations,  first  with 
this  country,  and  next  with  England,  it  has  steered  the  ship  of 
state  so  cleverly  as  to  lead  to  the  present  rapprochement  with  this 
nation,  and  to  at  least  a  maintenance  of  correct  relations  with 
England.  Perhaps,  however,  the  same  results  might  have  been 
obtained  by  the  Imperial  Chancellors,  if  they  had  been  left  un- 
trammelled to  the  exercise  of  their  constitutional  functions. 

The  Kaiser's  influence  upon  education  and  upon  science  in 
Germany  has  been  great  and,  in  the  main,  wholesome.  He  has 
clearly  perceived  the  urgent  need  of  remodelling  the  German  edu- 
cational system  on  new  lines — lines  more  in  accord  with  the  re- 
quirements of  this  age  of  practical  things;  and  his  ideas,  though 


THE  KAISER'S  PERSONAL  INFLUENCE          35 

at  first  they  met  the  united  opposition  of  the  professional  peda- 
gogues of  the  old  school,  are  now  slowly  prevailing.  In  the  wide 
domain  of  applied  science  the  Kaiser's  influence  has  also  wrought 
a  vast  amount  of  good. 

But  the  incalculable  harm  done  by  the  Kaiser's  influence  in 
other  fields  of  public  life  probably  more  than  balances  accounts. 
For  one  thing,  it  has  lowered  the  national  standard  of  political 
thought  and  liberty.  To  all  intents  and  purposes  Germany, 
though  nominally  enjoying  a  constitutional  form  of  government, 
is  ruled  autocratically.  This  is  a  curious  instance  of  political 
atavism,  when  the  previous  history  of  political  development  in 
Germany  during  the  nineteenth  century  is  considered. 

On  German  literary  and  art  life  the  personal  influence  of  the 
Kaiser  has  also  been  noxious  in  the  highest  degree.  He  has 
waged,  with  more  or  less  success,  a  savage  war  upon  that  highly 
interesting  movement  known  variously  as  "Secessionist"  or 
"Realistic,  "  and  of  which,  in  literature,  Hauptmann  and  Suder- 
mann  have  been  the  main  standard-bearers,  and  in  art,  Bocklin, 
Liebermann,  Klinger,  Thoma,  Stuck,  and  others.  With  all  his 
might  he  has  fought  this  movement,  the  most  promising  Germany 
has  known  for  a  century,  and  despite  its  extreme  and  unwise 
partisans  one  powerfully  moulding  German  thought  and  ideals. 
In  place  of  it  the  Kaiser  has,  so  far  as  lay  in  his  power,  substi- 
tuted tame  mediocrity,  as  strikingly  exemplified  by  his  own 
marble  "ancestral  gallery"  in  the  Siegesallee  in  Berlin,  and  by 
the  bombastic  historical  dramas  of  Joseph  Lauff,  the  latter  owing 
their  very  existence  to  the  Kaiser's  inspiration. 

But  perhaps  the  most  portentous  injury,  and  certainly  the 
most  completely  achieved,  done  to  German  public  life  by  the 
Kaiser's  personal  influence,  is  that  inflicted  upon  the  press  and 
periodical  literature.  Honest  expression  of  opinion,  whenever 
it  contravened  the  Kaiser's  ideas  and  convictions,  has  been  so 
persistently  and  severely  punished  that  it  may  be  said  to  be 
effectually  muzzled.  There  has  never  been  any  regime  in 
Germany,  so  far  as  the  records  go,  during  which  convictions 
for  lese  majeste  and  all  sorts  of  press  offenses  have  been  even 
approximately  as  numerous.  All  this  is  not  only  in  consonance 
with  the  Kaiser's  wishes,  but  it  is  in  large  measure  directly  due 
to  him,  the  appointment  of  the  judges  forming  the  highest 


36  GERMANY 

tribunal  in  the  empire,  and  the  positions  leading  up  to  this 
highest  court,  being  under  his  control.  The  Kaiser  has  never 
during  the  fourteen  years  of  his  reign  pardoned  a  single  one  of 
these  offenders  against  his  own  dignity,  nor  even  shortened,  in 
any  instance,  their  penalty.  Besides,  he  is  on  record  with  many 
sayings  wherein  he  expressed  nothing  less  than  downright  hos- 
tility to  a  free  press. 

In  the  Kaiser's  veins  mingle  strange  and  unharmonious  ele- 
ments— the  blood  of  the  Hohenzollerns,  than  which  there  is 
none  more  matter-of-fact  in  Europe,  nor  more  cool  and  well- 
disciplined,  and  the  blood  of  the  Guelphs,  than  which  there  is 
none  more  stubborn,  proud  and  unruly.  William  II  shows  very 
distinctly  this  double  lineage  in  his  physical  as  well  as  his  mental 
make-up.  When  one  keeps  this  in  mind,  the  discordant  qualities 
of  his  personal  influence,  in  its  baneful  as  well  as  its  beneficial 
effects,  are  more  justly  appreciated  and  adjusted. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    KAISER'S    FAMILY    LIFE 

THE  Emperor's  family  life  is  wholesome  and  restful,  and  since 
his  accession  to  the  throne,  when  still  a  young  man,  no  scandal 
has  publicly  been  connected  with  his  name.  The  one  great 
scandal  which  stirred  his  court,  eight  years  ago  (and  which  found 
its  last  quietus  only  recently  in  the  death  of  Baron  Schrader, 
the  traducer,  as  a  consequence  of  a  duel,  on  homicidal  terms, 
with  the  traduced,  Baron  Kotze),  met  in  no  one  a 
severer  judge  than  in  the  Kaiser  himself.  I  refer,  of  course,  to 
the  disgraceful  "anonymous  letter  affair,"  in  whose  meshes 
for  a  time  not  only  Countess  Hohenau,  one  of  the  chief  figures 
at  the  Berlin  court,  but  even  the  brother  of  the  Empress,  Duke 
Giinther  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  were  entangled.  It  was  a  case 
of  such  diabolical  malice  and  petty  meanness,  and  for  several 
years  so  shrouded  in  mystery,  that  it  led  to  the  wildest  suspicions 
and  most  sensational  rumours.  Yet  it  resolved  itself  in  the  end, 
when  the  full  truth  was  established,  to  nothing  worse  than  the 
cunningly  devised  intrigue  of  an  envious  and  ambitious  minor 
court  official  against  his  superior,  the  chief  chamberlain,  and 
the  sole  motive  in  the  intricate  network  of  cabal  was  a  desire  to 
supplant  one  of  the  Kaiser's  favourite  underlings.  It  chanced 
that  the  issue  of  the  duel  fought  between  Kotze  and  Schrader, 
whose  terms  were  "until  death  or  mortal  wound,"  was  favour- 
able to  the  victim  of  the  whole  miserable  intrigue,  and  so  even 
poetic  justice  was  satisfied. 

But  this  scandal,  like  some  minor  ones  before  and  since,  did 
not  touch  the  person  of  the  Kaiser,  nor  his  family.  Whatever 
his  peccadillos  may  have  been  as  a  prince,  until  several  years 
after  his  marriage,  and,  of  course,  talcs  of  that  kind  have  been 
circulated  by  the  court  gossips  and  found  their  way  into  the  sen- 
sational and  into  the  Socialist  press,  he  has  outgrown  them  long 
ago,  and  none  of  those  light  amours  which  even  so  honorable  ^ 

37 


38  GERMANY 

monarch  as  his  grandfather,  William  I,  indulged  in  now  and 
then,  are  charged  to  the  present  ruler  of  Germany.  Nor  is  this 
astonishing,  for  a  man  so  engrossed  with  serious  thoughts  and 
with  the  multifarious  duties  of  his  position  as  he,  has  scarcely 
time  or  inclination  for  those  lighter  affairs  of  the  heart  which 
less  busy  monarchs  might  find  pleasure  in.  He  is,  indeed,  an 
intense  and  rapid  worker,  and  a  brief  sketch  of  an  average  day 
with  him  will  show  that  between  rising  and  bedtime  hardly  a 
minute  is  not  accounted  for. 

The  Kaiser  plunges  into  his  day's  work  with  cheerful  and 
vigourous  alacrity.  He  is,  in  summer,  often  up  with  the  lark 
and  always  before  the  postman.  He  often  rises  as  early  as  five 
o'clock,  and  in  any  case  is  sure  to  be  astir  before  seven.  During 
the  hunting  season  he  rises  even  earlier.  When  the  boar  is 
hunted  in  the  Grunewald,  near  Berlin,  late  in  the  autumn,  the 
Kaiser's  pink  coat  may  be  dimly  perceived  gleaming  through 
the  misty  forest  long  before  sunrise,  and  in  midsummer,  when  he 
regularly  stalks  the  capercailzie  cock  in  the  Thuringian  woods 
around  the  Wartburg,  in  company  with  the  Grand  Duke  of  Saxe- 
Weimar,  he  has  sacrificed  half  of  the  night's  sleep  to  indulge  in 
this,  the  most  sportsmanlike  sport  to  be  had  in  Germany.  But 
these,  of  course,  are  exceptions. 

He  regularly  braces  himself  with  a  shower  bath,  and  then  he 
slips  into  his  uniform  and  goes  straight  to  breakfast.  This  is  a 
simple  but  substantial  meal,  consisting  of  eggs,  cold  meats,  tea, 
rolls,  and  butter.  At  this  meal  he  meets  his  entire  family,  the 
Empress  rising  as  a  rule  as  early  as  he,  and  often  hurriedly 
supervising  the  tea-making.  He  greets  her  and  the  children 
with  a  kiss  or  a  playful  pat,  and  then  the  meal,  like  those  later 
in  the  day,  is  quickly  despatched. 

Next  he  betakes  himself  to  his  study,  where  a  mass  of  cor- 
respondence confronts  him.  There  are  several  hundred  letters, 
petitions,  etc.,  arranged  and  classified  for  his  inspection  by  his 
six  secretaries,  who  have  already  been  at  work  for  an  hour  or 
more.  The  Kaiser  works  his  way  quickly  through  them,  now 
and  then  making  marginal  notes  in  his  large,  bold  and  rather 
odd-looking  handwriting,  or  dismissing  the  missives  on  their 
routine  way  without  comment.  In  the  piles  before  him  he  may 
notice  here  and  there  a  familiar  hand,  and  then  he  will  grasp 


39 

and  read  the  letter,  and  sometimes,  but  rarely,  write  an  answer 
on  the  spot,  or  else  dictate  one.  The  reports  on  a  thousand  and 
one  subjects  are  also  glanced  at,  and  thus  a  bird's-eye  view  ob- 
tained of  the  whole,  which  is  then  further  assorted  by  the  staff, 
the  Emperor  perhaps  reserving  a  dozen  or  so  of  the  whole  batch 
for  his  own  prompt  attention.  The  Kaiser's  personal  corre- 
spondence, once  quite  voluminous,  has  dwindled  more  and  more, 
but  once  in  a  while  he  still  sits  down  to  pen  a  letter.  He  has 
not  made  friends  with  the  typewriter,  considering  it  an  outrage 
on  good  taste,  and  he  refuses  to  accept  any  machine-made  or 
manifolded  letters  or  manuscript. 

There  is  a  regular  clipping  bureau  daily  at  work  for  the  Kaiser. 
This  forms  a  small  part  of  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  and  it 
sends  him  for  his  inspection  every  morning  the  latest  cullings 
supposed  to  interest  him,  among  them  for  some  time  past  clip- 
pings from  the  American  daily  and  periodical  press.  The  Kaiser 
keeps  a  scrap-book,  tabulated  according  to  subjects  and  arranged 
as  to  dates.  Thence,  if  the  wish  occur  to  him  to  learn  something 
more  definite  about  a  special  matter,  he  will  cause  one  of  his 
secretaries  to  make  extracts  and  to  read  them  to  him,  the  notes 
in  each  case  containing  source,  authority,  date  and  place.  Then, 
often,  he  sends  out  orders  that  he  wants  to  see  some  particular 
person  or  persons  on  this  same  matter,  with  an  intimation  as  to 
what  he  expects  to  hear  from  them.  He  has  thus  listened  to 
what  the  German  university  professors  call  "  privatissima  "  from 
perhaps  half  the  noted  men  in  Germany  and  hundreds  of  famous 
foreigners— men  of  science  like  Helmholtz,  Slaby,  Riedler, 
Roentgen,  Koch,  Behring,  Leyden,  Harnack,  Pfleiderer  and 
Dalitzsch;  men  of  action  like  Ballin,  Wiegand,  Siemens;  or  men 
of  eminence  in  other  paths  of  life,  such  as  travellers,  explorers, 
soldiers,  naval  men,  inventors,  discoverers,  political  leaders. 

His  daily  reading  is,  however,  very  small.  He  glances,  when 
he  has  the  time,  at  the  Paris  Figaro,  at  the  London  Times,  occa- 
sionally at  a  Russian  paper,  and,  of  the  German  press,  at  the 
Kreuz-Zeitung,  the  Cologne  Gazette,  and  on  special  occasions  at 
papers  of  the  opposition,  including  the  Vorwdrts,  the  Socialist 
central  organ.  Frequently,  though,  he  does  not  see  a  news- 
paper for  a  whole  week  or  longer,  and  of  periodicals  and  illus- 
trated papers  he  sees,  generally  speaking,  but  a  few  extracts  or 


40  GERMANY 

articles  of  special  interest  to  him.  Books  he  seldom  reads, 
and  then  only  those  strongly  appealing  to  him,  like  the  naval 
books  of  Captain  Mahan,  whose  adoption  as  German  text-books 
he  subsequently  ordered.  On  his  midsummer  trip  to  the 
Northern  Seas,  however,  he  takes  a  big  supply  of  carefully 
selected  volumes  along,  both  of  the  latest  and  of  old  books.  Last 
summer  he  had  with  him,  for  instance,  the  original  French 
version  of  the  interesting  correspondence  of  his  ancestor, 
Frederick  the  Great,  but  he  threw  that  aside,  remarking  at 
the  cynicism  in  it,  and  saying:  "What  an  old  heathen  he  was  !" 
After  rapidly  disposing  of  his  correspondence  in  the  manner 
above  indicated,  the  Kaiser  usually  receives  some  verbal  reports, 
from  members  of  the  Cabinet  sometimes,  but  oftener  from  depart- 
ment chiefs,  from  some  army  general  or  one  of  his  aides-de-camp, 
and  more  often  still  from  the  chiefs  of  his  "  cabinets  "  or  bureaus. 
There  are  three  of  them,  military,  naval  and  private.  The 
military  cabinet  deals  with  all  questions  of  a  personal  nature 
that  affect  the  army,  such  as  promotions,  dismissals,  furloughs, 
individual  merit  or  misdemeanor,  etc.  Through  this  agency 
he  is  enabled  to  keep  in  that  strongly  personal  touch  with  the 
whole  corps  of  Prussian  officers,  which  gives  him,  as  it  did  the 
Prussian  monarchs  before  him,  such  a  strong  hold  on  them. 
The  naval  cabinet  enables  him  to  do  the  same  thing  with  the 
navy,  and  as  its  personnel  is  much  smaller  he  is  even  more 
intimately  acquainted  with  all  the  details  of  his  naval  officers' 
affairs.  The  private  cabinet,  finally,  handles  a  great  variety  of 
matters,  such  as  petitions,  promotions,  decorations,  anniver- 
saries, etc.,  and  it  performs  for  him  a  similar  service  in  its  own 
way  as  the  other  two  for  the  army  and  navy.  There  has  often 
been  complaint  in  the  German  press  that  relatively  little  reaches 
the  Kaiser  as  to  the  affairs  of  State  as  well  as  to  the  affairs  of  his 
subjects  that  has  not  previously  gone  through  the  channel  of 
these  three  so-called  "cabinets,"  and  that  the  chiefs  of  these, 
while  occupying  no  constitutionally  amenable  positions,  really 
exert  more  influence  in  shaping  the  mind  and  the  prejudices  of  the 
head  of  the  nation  than  do  his  constitutional  advisers.  This 
complaint  is  founded  on  fact,  and  to  this  surreptitious  but  reg- 
ularly exerted  and  powerful  influence  must  be  attributed  much 
in  the  Emperor's  views  and  actions  which  otherwise  would  be 


THF  KAISER'S  FAMILY  LIFE  41 

inexplicable.  The  trio  Lucanus,  Huelsen-Haeseler  and  Senden- 
Bibran,  who  are  the  chiefs  of  these  three  bureaus,  unauthorized 
by  either  the  Prussian  or  Imperial  constitution,  have  now  and 
again  exerted  a  baleful  influence  on  the  Kaiser's  mind.  They 
are,  however,  personally  men  of  the  highest  integrity. 

There  is  another  institution  which  demands  the  daily  attention 
of  the  Emperor,  viz.,  the  Household  Ministry,  to  whose  province 
belongs  the  administration  of  the  Kaiser's  personal,  family 
and  crown  estates,  and  of  the  whole  court  with  its  variegated 
interests.  In  this  domain  the  Empress  relieves  her  husband 
to  some  extent,  but  it  claims,  nevertheless,  his  almost  daily 
attention.  The  Kaiser's  personal  and  crown  estates  are  very 
considerable.  He  owns  at  present  one  hundred  and  two  of 
them,  many  being  leased  or  rented  for  lifetime  or  a  long  term, 
usually  fourteen  years.  A  great  part  of  his  personal  income  is 
derived  from  these  estates,  and  that  makes  the  Kaiser,  so  to 
speak,  an  agrarian,  as  the  constant  falling  in  the  rent  values  of 
these  farms,  dairies,  and  big  manorial  holdings,  largely  due  to 
American  competition  in  agricultural  products,  reduces  his 
revenues  to  that  extent. 

By  nine  in  the  summer,  and  by  ten  or  eleven  in  the  winter, 
these  reports  are  usually  disposed  of,  and  the  Kaiser  then  takes 
his  first  airing,  with  his  wife  accompanying  him.  When  in 
Berlin  he  will  either  drive  or  ride  on  horseback  to  the  Thier- 
garten,  the  fine  large  park  just  without  the  Brandenburg  Gate. 
At  a  certain  spot  he  dismounts,  and  then  walks  rather  rapidly 
along  the  side  paths  for  a  half  or  whole  hour,  according  to  the 
weather  and  other  circumstances,  with  the  Empress  on  his  arm 
and  one  of  his  military  aides  by  his  side,  while  one  or  two  follow 
him  at  some  distance,  and  others  precede  him,  he  chatting  or 
conversing  the  while.  It  is  rather  a  wonder  that  no  attempt 
has  ever  been  made  on  the  life  of  William  II  during  these  walks. 
Their  hour  and  place  are  well  known  in  Berlin,  and  the  Thier- 
garten  is,  of  course,  accessible  to  all.  There  are  always  several 
of  Baron  Windheim's  shrewdest  sleuths  from  the  secret  branch 
of  the  police  circling  at  some  distance  around  the  Kaiser  when 
he  takes  these  walks,  scurrying  through  the  bushes  and  dodging 
out  of  sight  at  the  turns  in  the  path,  for  he  dislikes  to  see  these 
gentry  so  close  to  him.  Besides,  at  the  Emperor's  own  sug- 


42  GERMANY 

gestion  some  time  ago,  the  dense  vegetation  in  the  Thiergarten 
has  during  the  past  few  years  been  considerably  thinned  out,  so 
that  it  is  now  not  so  easy  for  an  unknown  person  to  creep  up 
unawares  toward  the  path.  Skulking  and  poorly  clad  persons 
are  forthwith  stopped  by  the  detectives  when  met  with  near 
this  part  of  the  park.  For  all  that,  it  would  be  a  relatively  easy 
task  for  a  determined  man  to  get  near  enough  to  the  imperial 
person  during  these  morning  walks  to  throw  a  bomb  or  fire  a 
revolver  at  him,  and  Baron  Windheim,  the  Berlin  police  presi- 
dent, has  for  years  vainly  tried  to  dissuade  him  from  this  form 
of  exercise.  The  Kaiser  is,  personally,  a  man  of  high  courage, 
and  believes,  like  Napoleon,  in  his  star.  Besides,  to  give  up  his 
much-needed  exercise  in  the  Thiergarten  would  by  no  means 
eliminate  the  danger  of  assassination  from  his  path.  On  his 
way  from  the  royal  castle  to  this  park,  which  he  often  takes  twice 
in  the  day,  he  has  to  pass  along  the  whole  length  of  the  Via 
Triumphalis  of  Berlin,  the  Unter  den  Linden,  and  thus  it  would 
be  an  easy  matter  for  an  evil-disposed  person  to  kill  him  while 
riding  past  a  given  point,  although  he  always  goes  at  a  quick 
trot  or  canter.  At  any  rate,  the  fact  that  no  such  attempt  has  yet 
been  made  on  his  life  is  a  striking  proof  that  Anarchists  are  few 
and  Socialists  not  murderously  inclined  in  Germany. 

From  this  walk  he  will  often  ride  or  drive  to  Count  Buelow, 
the  imperial  chancellor,  to  converse  on  matters  of  state  for  an 
hour,  or  take  luncheon  with  him,  or  else  similarly  surprise  an- 
other cabinet  minister,  or  one  or  the  other  of  the  ambassadors, 
especially  Count  Szoegenyi,  the  Austro- Hungarian  representa- 
tive, or  Count  Osten-Sacken,  the  Czar's  man  in  Berlin,  for  both 
of  whom  he  has  a  strong  personal  attachment.  He  doubtless 
would  frequently  pay  similar  visits  to  Mr.  White,  the  American 
ambassador,  whom  he  sincerely  likes,  if  this  country,  like  the 
leading  European  countries,  had  a  fine  palace  for  the  home  of 
its  embassy,  instead  of  obliging  every  newly  arriving  ambassa- 
dor to  Germany  to  go  house-hunting  during  the  first  year  of  his 
stay,  and  then  to  put  up  with  rented  apartments  for  the  rest  of 
his  short  term.  What  such  personal  and  more  or  less  intimate 
intercourse  with  a  monarch  like  William  II  is  worth  to  an  astute 
and  suave  diplomat  needs  no  pointing  out. 

If  the  Emperor  has  made  no  such  informal  call  on  his  way 


THE  KAISER'S  FAMILY  LIFE  43 

froul  his  airing,  he  frequently  employs  an  hour  or  two  in  visiting 
the  studios  of  sculptors,  painters,  or  other  artists,  who  are  per- 
haps executing  some  work  ordered  by  him,  or  he  inspects  some 
public  institution.  Then  he  returns  home,  and  the  regular 
routine  work  with  his  various  "cabinets"  is  resumed,  audience 
is  given  to  persons  by  previous  arrangement,  and  more  reports 
are  listened  to,  and  decisions  made.  In  fact,  this  part  of  the 
Emperor's  duties  goes  on,  with  interruptions,  the  whole  day, 
and  often  far  into  the  night.  Like  Bismarck,  the  Emperor  is  an 
indefatigable  worker,  and  it  is  by  no  means  a  sinecure  to  be 
closely  attached  to  his  person.  He  never  takes  a  nap  during 
the  daytime,  not  even  after  luncheon  or  dinner,  in  this  breaking 
with  an  old  German  custom. 

Luncheon  comes  at  two,  and  it  is  not,  as  a  rule,  a  very  sumptu- 
ous meal.  The  table  is  always  set  very  daintily,  with  flowers 
from  the  Potsdam  or  Berlin  imperial  hothouses  and  nurseries  in 
crystal  vases,  fine  royal  china  and  gold  and  silverware  set  off  by 
snowy  linen,  a  fashion  introduced  by  the  late  Empress  Frederick, 
the  Kaiser's  mother.  But  when  no  guests  of  royal  rank  or  other- 
wise of  great  distinction  are  present,  luncheon  consists  of  but 
four  courses,  viz.,  soup,  oysters  or  fish  to  begin  with,  next  a 
roast,  with  vegetables,  then  game  in  season,  or  fowl,  followed  by 
ices  or  pudding,  fruit,  and  cheese.  With  this  two  or  three  rather 
light  wines  are  served,  such  as  some  fragrant  Moselle,  a  young 
Rhine  wine,  a  bit  of  Bordeaux,  or,  sometimes,  a  glass  of  German 
sparkling  mousseux.  All  these  wines,  so  far  as  they  have  grown 
on  German  soil,  come  from  the  imperial  vineyards.  On  state 
occasions,  or  on  festive  family  days,  choicer  wines  from  the 
Emperor's  cellars  are  served,  and  there  is  probably  no  other 
court  in  the  world  where  wines  of  such  rare  and  racy  flavour  and 
of  such  special  vintages  are  to  be  found  in  like  quantities.  But 
for  ordinary  occasions  the  Empress,  like  the  thrifty  housewife 
she  is,  feeds  her  family,  including  her  husband,  on  simple  and 
homely  fare.  This,  besides,  is  in  accord  with  the  Kaiser's  own 
tastes.  There  is  a  legend  at  the  Berlin  court  that  the  Kaiser's 
favorite  dishes  are  "Sauerbraten"  (a  species  of  potroast  with  a 
sour  and  fat  gravy)  and  "Schmierkase"  (unsalted  fresh  cheese), 
but  that  his  medical  man,  Doctor  Leutholdt,  has  forbidden  him 
these  two  items  of  diet. 


44  GERMANY 

During  the  afternoon,  so  far  as  it  is  not  taken  up  with  the 
aforementioned  duties,  the  Kaiser  again  takes  a  drive  or  ride  to 
the  Thiergarten,  when  in  Berlin,  or  a  stroll  through  Sanssouci 
Park  when  residing  in  Potsdam,  and  gives  more  audiences,  or  de- 
votes some  time  to  the  study  of  papers  in  important  or  pressing 
cases.  One  of  his  peculiarities  is  to  annotate  nearly  every  paper 
he  has  thus  read,  often  very  liberally.  Reports  made  to  him 
from  the  general  staff  of  the  army  are  frequently  turned  by  him 
topsy-turvy,  requiring  the  whole  work  to  be  done  over.  He  has, 
as  the  world  knows,  a  nimble  and  pliant  mind,  able  to  grasp  many 
subjects  with  remarkable  rapidity.  During  his  audiences,  too, 
his  questions  sometimes  intuitively  go  straight  to  the  core  of  the 
matter.  Besides,  he  possesses  a  smattering  of  nearly  everything 
in  the  wide  domain  of  human  knowledge,  due  to  his  quick  percep- 
tion and  his  retentive  memory.  If  fate  had  not  placed  him  on 
the  imperial  throne,  he  would  have  had  the  stuff  for  a  good 
journalist  in  him.  But  his  often  fatal  mistake  is  to  assume  that 
he  knows  everything,  that  the  little  which  he  has  been  able  to 
pick  up  about  the  sciences,  military  lore,  literature  and  art,  is  all 
there  is  worth  knowing  about  these  matters,  and  that  he  must 
direct  and  guide  every  subject  that  comes  under  his  personal 
observation,  which  in  the  twentieth  century  is  a  manifest  ab- 
surdity. His  ideas  on  art  particularly  are  crude  and  swayed 
strongly  by  prejudice  against  the  independent  spirit  that  nearly 
always  characterizes  the  original-minded  artist,  and  his  influence 
on  German  art,  which  happens  to  be  in  a  very  interesting  stage 
of  transition,  I  consider  wholly  bad  and  largely  responsible  for 
the  gingerbread  style  of  official  sculpture  rampant  in  the  Germany 
of  to-day. 

The  evening  ushers  in  the  brightest  and  by  no  means  the 
least  valuable  hours  of  the  Kaiser's  day.  Guests  are  always 
invited  to  the  dinner,  ordinarily  timed  for  six  o'clock.  In  the 
choice  of  these  guests  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  proud  ruler 
of  Germany  shows  an  amazing  catholicity  of  taste  and  a  re- 
freshing absence  of  social  conventionality.  While  during  the 
daytime  his  bearing  is  rather  stiff  and  haughty,  and  a  strong 
sense  of  his  dignity  seems  to  dwell  with  him,  at  the  dinner  hour 
he  appears  to  be  actuated  by  a  desire  to  please  and  to  be  pleased 
anr1  instructed  in  turn.  Under  the  stout  oak  of  his  dining-table 


THE  KAISER'S  FAMILY  LIFE  45 

have  been  stretched  the  legs  of  noted  men  of  almost  every  rank 
of  life  and  of  every  variety  of  thought.  Recently,  for  instance, 
the  Kaiser  shocked  the  orthodox  clergy  by  inviting  repeatedly 
as  his  guest  Professor  Delitzsch,  the  greatest  living  Assyriologist, 
and  one  of  the  most  formidable  opponents  to  the  theory  of  the 
divine  authorship  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  listened  with  evident 
interest  to  his  views  on  cosmogony  and  comparative  mythology. 
He  similarly  received  at  his  table  the  late  Cecil  Rhodes,  even 
unto  that  iconoclast's  unceremonious  frock  coat,  and  thereby 
gave  strong  offence  to  the  whole  tribe  of  Philistines  in  the 
empire.* 

Supper  is  served  at  nine,  when  there  are  more  guests,  and  when 
the  Munich  beer  and  cigars  are  handed  around  the  Emperor 
likes  to  have  some  lively  music,  bright  conversation,  or  a 
game  of  skat — a  very  interesting  German  game  of  cards,  played 
always  for  very  low  stakes.  This  year  he  wanted  to  hear  some- 
thing of  American  national  music,  and  he  had  Van  Eweyk,  a 
young  American  barytone  who  is  settled  in  Berlin  as  a  music 
teacher,  repeatedly  sing  him  and  his  guests  quaint  plantation 
songs. 

The  interval  between  dinner  and  supper  is  often  spent  by  the 
Kaiser  with  the  Empress  and  his  children,  and  to  judge  by  the 
hilarious  shouts  which  are  heard  from  the  apartments  where 
these  little  reunions  are  held,  they  must  represent  the  simplest 
and  happiest  moments  which  this  tremendous  worker  allows 
himself. 

It  is  at  dinner  and  supper  that  the  varied  play  of  a  many- 
sided  mind  scintillates  its  brightest.  Quick  at  repartee,  and 
with  an  inexhaustible  mine  of  anecdote,  the  Kaiser  then  fre- 
quently gives  himself  up  unreservedly  to  the  charm  of  uncon- 
ventional conversation.  He  discourses,  when  in  the  mood, 
with  great  fluency  and  vivid  flashes  of  wit.  He,  however,  ques- 
tions more  than  talks,  always  on  the  alert  for  enriching  his  fund 
of  knowledge.  He  quickly  recognizes  on  such  occasions  the 

*During  the  winter  the  Emperor  and  his  immediate  entourage  or  guests 
often  visit  the  theatre.  He  prefers  the  old-fashioned  style  of  drama  and 
comedy,  being  strongly  opposed  to  the  new  literary  current  in  Germany, 
and  to  Ibsenism  and  Tolstoism  as  well.  Unlike  his  grandfather,  who  was 
an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  ballet,  he  cares  nothing  for  that  class  of 
stage  divertisement. 


46  GERMANY 

man  who  has  mastered  the  subject  tinder  discussion,  and  then 
proceeds  to  "pump"  him.  His  voice  and  lively  gestures  help 
to  emphasize  everything  he  says,  his  voice  being  pitched  in  rather 
a  high  and  strident  key,  but  full  of  modulation  and  insistence. 

No  doubt  this  habit  of  the  Emperor's  always  to  deal  with  men 
rather  than  books  is  an  excellent  one,  as  it  enables  him  to  often 
draw  out  the  very  marrow  of  a  master-mind.  And  as  he  seldom 
forgets  a  fact  he  has  learned,  and  never  a  face,  this  pleasant 
habit  of  treating  men  as  walking  cyclopaedias  and  extracting 
from  them  their  mental  essence  stands  him  in  good  stead.  His 
speeches  are  often  the  result  of  pondering  the  thoughts  he  heard 
from  others.  After  these  gay  and  lively  dinner  and  supper  con- 
versations, the  Kaiser  frequently  sits  calmly  down  by  his  desk 
in  his  quiet  study  and  there  jots  down  the  facts  he  has  learned 
that  evening.  Then  he  retires,  but  within  reach  of  his  hand, 
on  a  little  table,  is  always  paper  and  pencil,  so  that  ideas  which 
strike  him  before  falling  asleep  or  during  wakeful  nights  may  not 
escape  him. 

The  Kaiser  is  such  a  marked  personality,  and  his  wife  of  so 
retiring  and  rather  bashful  a  disposition,  that  very  little  has  ever 
crept  into  publicity  regarding  her.  But  she,  too,  is  a  distinct 
personality.  She  is  a  perfect  wife  in  the  old-fashioned  German 
sense,  and  taceat  mulier  in  ecclesia  her  motto.  She  lets  her  hus- 
band do  the  talking,  to  use  a  homely  phrase.  She  is  also  an 
affectionate  and  indulgent  mother,  and  all  her  children  adore  her. 

In  1896,  at  the  Berlin  municipal  exposition,  the  Kaiser  wanted 
to  buy  her  a  costly  dress  there  exhibited  and  adorned  with  a 
very  long  train.  She  smilingly  refused.  "What  use  would  it 
be  ? "  she  asked.  "  With  two  or  three  of  the  boys  always  hanging 
to  my  skirt,  it  would  be  torn  in  a  jiffy."  And  when,  during 
religious  instruction,  the  young  princes  were  taught  that  all  are 
sinners,  Prince  Eitel  Fritz  cried:  "That  can't  be  true, — my 
mother  isn't  a  sinner." 

The  Kaiser's  ways  with  his  boys  are  often,  too,  very  pleasant. 
Once  when  he  had  won,  as  the  best  shot  at  a  military  rifle  tourna- 
ment, a  small  money  prize,  he  put  it  in  his  pocket,  saying:  "I 
can  buy  something  for  the  boys  with  that."  He  has  the  habit, 
whenever  he  is  dining  out,  of  loading  his  pockets  with  candy 
and  sweetmeats,  generally  remarking:  "That  is  for  the  chil- 


THE  KAISER'S  FAMILY  LIFE  47 

dren;  they  always  like  best  what  I  bring  home,  just  as  I  used  to 
do  with  my  father  when  I  was  a  boy." 

Both  the  Kaiser  and  his  wife  keep  up  the  national  traditions 
as  to  Christmas  and  Eastertide,  so  dear  to  little  Teutons.  The 
Christmas  tree  is  annually  decorated  in  fine  style,  and  gifts  that 
show  a  wealth  of  loving  thought  are  placed  underneath  its 
spreading  boughs.  At  Easter  the  imperial  couple  invite  their 
own  children  and  some  of  the  latter's  playfellows  to  the  park  of 
Chateau  Bellevue,  in  Berlin,  and  there  both  Kaiser  and  Empress 
hide  Easter  eggs  in  hundreds  of  bushes,  the  Empress  crawling 
around  with  the  little  ones  on  all  fours,  and  subsequently  treat 
the  whole  juvenile  crowd  to  goodies  and  chocolate  in  the  chateau 
ijear  by. 

It  almost  broke  her  tender  mother's  heart  when,  one  after  the 
other,  her  sons  fled  from  the  maternal  nest. 

As  to  her  other  qualities,  they  are  preeminently  housewifely 
ones.  She  thoroughly  understands  every  department  of  house 
and  kitchen  work,  and  often  herself  cooks,  or  superintends  the 
cooking  of,  some  favorite  dish  for  her  husband  or  guests.  She 
has  a  very  devout  and  pious  mind,  and  has  made  it  her  special 
province,  ever  since  her  husband's  accession,  to  aid  church, 
hospital  and  charitable  work  of  every  kind.  Not  unfrequently 
she  visits  personally  worthy  persons  in  distress,  especially  moth- 
ers of  large  families  and  recently  confined  ones,  and  then  her 
bounty  is  lavish.  While  in  Berlin,  she  frequently  visits  hos- 
pitals and  asylums,  evinces  heartfelt  sympathy,  and  charms 
by  her  gentle  solicitude. 

The  building  of  new  churches,  though,  and  the  extension  of 
church  life  have  been  her  special  hobby.  When  she  became 
Empress,  the  need  of  more  churches  in  Berlin  and  many  other 
cities  of  Prussia  had  become  very  palpable.  Since  then  forty-two 
new  churches,  nearly  all  of  them  being  fine  structures,  have 
been  built  in  Berlin  alone,  mainly  through  her  instrumentality. 
Her  chief  court  marshal,  Baron  Mirbach,  under  her  instructions, 
is  spending  a  great  part  of  his  time  in  personally  visiting  wealthy 
citizens  and  soliciting  contributions  for  the  erection  and  en- 
dowment of  churches  or  eleemosynary  institutions.  In  the  exe- 
cution of  this  task  he  shows  a  very  catholic  taste,  for  he  does 
not  scruple  in  the  least  to  visit  well-to-do  Jews  for  the  purpose. 


48  GERMANY 

They  were,  in  fact,  among  the  heaviest  subscribers  toward  the 
building  of  the  magnificent  Emperor  William  Memorial  Church 
and  of  the  new  Dom,  or  cathedral,  near  the  royal  castle  in 
Berlin,  which  latter  alone  cost  about  five  million  dollars.  Even 
Socialist  leaders,  if  they  only  be  wealthy,  like  Singer  (who  is, 
besides,  a  Hebrew),  this  Imperial  messenger  seeks  out  for  these 
pious  ends.  The  Socialist  press,  which  is  frankly  atheistic  and 
anti-monarchic,  has  not  failed  to  comment  on  these  facts  with 
vitriolic  fury. 

How  charmingly  unaffected,  kind  and  genuinely  human 
the  Empress  is,  all  those  who  have  had  occasion  to  meet  her 
attest.  She  made  the  American  colony  in  Berlin  her  enthusiastic 
champions  several  years  ago  by  showing,  at  one  of  her  hospital 
visits,  tender  and  graceful  attention  to  Miss  Morgan,  an  elderly 
American  spinster  residing  in  Berlin,  and  just  at  that  time  a 
patient  in  that  particular  institution.  There  are  innumerable 
stories  current  in  Germany,  wherever  she  has  stayed  for  a  shorter 
or  longer  time,  illustrating  her  amiable  gifts  of  heart.  Through- 
out Bavaria,  where  her  husband  is  strongly  disliked,  she  is  ex- 
tremely popular.  When,  several  years  ago,  she  spent  a  month 
in  the  summer  in  the  Bavarian  highlands,  the  rude  and  simple- 
minded  peasantry  fairly  worshiped  her. 

Like  every  normally  constituted  woman,  she  has  her  little 
vanities.  She  seriously  rebelled  for  a  time  against  her  husband's 
dictum  that  she  must  have  no  more  dresses  made  in  Paris,  but 
to  get  all  she  needed  in  that  line  made  either  in  Germany,  if  at 
all  feasible,  or  else  in  Vienna,  and  to  follow  the  same  principle 
as  to  the  garments  needed  for  her  children,  excepting  such 
sporting  goods  as  were  not  readily  obtainable  at  home,  and 
which  she  was  allowed  to  order  from  England.  But  when  the 
1  Kaiser  once  detected  her  in  a  flagrant  case  of  insubordination, 
there  is  said  to  have  been  a  scene,  and  since  then  she  has  sub- 
mitted in  this,  as  in  nearly  all  other  things. 

Some  years  ago,  when  she  suddenly  began  to  grow  stout,  she 
was  induced  by  a  lady  at  court  to  begin,  unknown  to  the  Kaiser, 
a  special  treatment,  into  which  the  regular  consumption  of  cer- 
tain pills  made  from  the  thyroid  glands  of  sheep  largely  entered. 
The  treatment  had  indeed  the  desired  effect,  but  it  had  other- 
wise rather  unpleasant  consequences,  and  the  change  wrought 


THE  KAISER'S  FAMILY  LIFE  49 

in  her  appearance  was  such  a  rapid  one  that  the  Kaiser  could 
not  fail  to  notice  it.  Investigation  brought  out  the  above  state 
of  facts,  and  then  she  was  prevailed  upon  to  accept  the  services 
of  her  regular  physician  in  undoing,  as  much  as  possible,  the  evil 
done.  The  Empress,  however,  shows  to  this  day  the  effects  of 
her  own  treatment,  and  her  hair  has  been  fast  turning  gray  since. 

She  is  by  no  means  what  is  termed  chic  or  "stylish"  in  general 
appearance,  and  her  dresses,  no  matter  how  costly  and  elegant, 
never  fit  her  perfectly.  But  she  has  a  quiet,  demure  gentle- 
ness of  demeanor  and  of  aspect,  and  kindness  and  charitable- 
ness of  heart  are  so  conspicuous  in  her  that  she  easily  wins  and 
pleases.  Her  aspirations  never  soar  higher  than  those  of  a 
model  German  "Hausfrau,"  and  her  tastes  in  literature  and  art, 
if  she  have  any,  never  became  known.  She  converses  always 
in  a  low,  slightly  lisping  voice,  and  she  speaks  German  with  a 
distinct  Holstein  burr,  due  to  family  and  educational  influences. 
She  understands  and  speaks  French  well,  however,  and  English 
tolerably. 

The  Empress  is  a  few  months  older  than  her  husband,  and  she 
looks,  despite  her  placid  disposition  and  despite  the  arts  of  the 
toilet,  fully  five  years  more  than  he.  This  is  a  point  on  which  she 
is  very  sensitive.  When  he  was  still  plain  Prince  William,  and 
especially  during  the  first  three  years  of  her  married  life,  she  was 
violently  jealous  of  him,  and  rumour  has  it  that  there  was  some 
cause  for  it.  It  is  related  that  on  one  occasion  she  went  com- 
plaining to  the  old  Emperor,  her  husband's  grandfather,  with  a 
tale  that  had  come  to  her  ears.  The  old  gentleman,  after 
courteously  listening  to  her,  playfully  patted  her  cheek  and 
half-chidingly,  half-sympathetically,  said  to  her:  "Well,  child, 
then  you  ought  to  have  married  no  Hohenzollern. "  From 
that  time  on  she  learned  to  hide  her  feelings. 

Altogether,  she  is  about  the  best  wife  a  man  like  the  Kaiser 
could  have  found.  She  has  justified  Bismarck's  choice.  The 
Kaiser  has,  now  and  then,  given  expression  to  his  approval  of 
her  in  terse  and  slightly  sarcastic  sayings.  As  when  he  re- 
marked that  she  was  the  old  German  ideal  in  confining  herself 
to  the  three  "Ks" — Kirche  (church),  Kuche  (kitchen),  and 
Kinder  (children) ;  or,  on  another  occasion,  remarking  that  she 
always  acted  on  him  as  "an  anodyne. " 


CHAPTER  V 
GERMANY'S  POLITICAL  TURNING-POINT 

FOR  years  past  Germany's  policy,  domestic  and  foreign,  has 
been  vacillating.  It  has  now  arrived  at  a  point  where  irresolu- 
tion becomes  impossible.  There  must  be  decision,  and  there 
must  be  a  break  with  the  past.  She  must  change  her  foreign 
policy  and  she  must  modify  her  fiscal  policy.  The  Dreibund  is 
crumbling  before  our  very  eyes,  and  the  important  tariff  bill  now 
'before  the  Reichstag  is  a  clinching  proof  that  Germany  intends 
to  alter  her  policy  in  that  respect.  Count  von  Buelow's  repeated 
declarations  before  the  Reichstag  showed,  as  plainly  as  the  words 
of  a  statesman  of  purely  diplomatic  training  could  do,  that  reli- 
ance is  no  longer  placed  on  the  international  confederation  com- 
posed of  Germany,  Austria  and  Italy;  and  these  declarations 
have  been  so  understood  by  the  entire  German  press.  The 
Kaiser's  advances  during  the  last  few  years  both  to  this  country 
and  to  England,  of  which  the  mission  of  his  brother,  Prince 
Henry,  was  but  the  latest  and  most  striking  illustration,  clearly 
point  out  the  direction  which  he  means  to  give  to  Germany's 
foreign  policy  in  the  near  future. 

In  the  chapter  of  Bismarck's  Memoirs  which  is  devoted  to  a 
discussion  of  the  genesis  and  the  probable  duration  of  the 
Dreibund,  the  matter  is  treated  without  any  reserve.  Bismarck 
there  makes  it  plain  that  the  understanding  with  Austria  was 
based,  primarily,  on  the  assumption  that  a  war  with  Russia 
was  likely  to  come,  not  one  with  France;  and  the  admission  of 
Italy  was  designed  to  safeguard  that  country  and  Germany 
against  French  aggression.  That  Bismarck,  when  he  wrote  that 
chapter,  not  long  before  his  death,  had  begun  to  have  strong  mis- 
givings as  to  the  intrinsic  and  lasting  force  of  this  tripartite 
agreement,  is  evident  from  the  concluding  paragraph,  in  which 
he  says: 

"The  Triple  Alliance  is  a  strategic  position  which,  in  view  of 


GERMANY'S  POLITICAL  TURNING-POINT      51 

the  dangers  threatening  at  the  time  of  its  conclusion,  was  ad- 
visable, and  was  the  best  that  could  be  attained  under  existing 
circumstances.  It  has  from  time  to  time  been  prolonged,  and 
we  may  succeed  in  prolonging  it  again ;  but  no  lasting  treaty  of 
dhis  kind  is  possible  between  great  powers,  and  it  would  be  un- 
erase to  regard  it  as  a  secure  foundation  for  every  kind  of  pos- 
sibility, which  may  change  in  the  days  to  come  the  conditions, 
needs  and  sentiments  which  once  made  it  possible. " 

He  winds  up  with  a  skeptical  expression  of  even  a  more 
decided  cast.  Since  Bismarck's  death,  conditions  have  altered 
more  rapidly  than  could  have  been  foreseen  then.  Russia  under 
Nicholas  II  has  become  eminently  peaceful.  The  Panslavic 
movement  has  been  arrested.  More  friendly  relations  than 
existed  for  fifty  years  past  have  been  established  between  Russia 
and  Austria.  There  is  no  longer  any  fear  on  Austria's  part  of 
Russian  aggression.  For  Austria,  then,  the  reason  which  con- 
trolled her  in  becoming  a  member  of  the  Dreibund  no  longer 
exists.  On  the  other  hand,  Austrian  internal  politics  have 
simultaneously  changed  in  a  manner  more  and  more  hostile,  or 
at  least  more  averse,  to  the  alliance  with  Germany.  The  Czechs, 
the  Poles  in  Galicia,  and  all  the  other  Slavic  populations  of  the 
polyglot  empire,  have  gained  political  ascendancy;  they  have 
been,  from  the  first,  opponents  of  the  Dreibund,  and  they  are 
more  opposed  to  it  now  than  ever.  The  Polish  question  in 
Prussia  has  of  late  greatly  embittered  the  Poles  against  Germany, 
whom  they  regard  as  a  persecutor  of  their  race.  The  pending 
German  tariff  bill  adds  new  fuel  to  this  feeling.  In  Italy,  the 
situation  is  similar.  Italy  no  longer  fears  French  hostility,  and 
the  recent  Italian  naval  demonstration  in  French  harbours  was 
intended  and  accepted  as  an  outward  sign  of  mutual  good-will. 
The  long  Franco-Italian  tariff  war  is  over,  and  an  amiable  under- 
standing between  the  two  nations  as  to  the  Mediterranean  ques- 
tion, and  as  to  Tunis  and  Tripoli,  has  removed  the  last  inflam- 
mable material.  Therewith  the  chief  cause  which  induced  Italy 
to  join  the  Dreibund  has  disappeared,  and  she,  too,  looks  upon 
the  proposed  German  tariff  legislation  as  inimical  to  her  fiscal 
interests.  The  alliance  with  Austria  was  always  unpopular  in 
Italy  because  of  the  Italia  Irredenta  movement,  which  was  handi- 
capped under  Dreibund  auspices;  and  of  late  the  Francophiles, 


52  GERMANY 

always    a  large   and  very  influential  part  of  the  nation,  have 
gained  enormously  in   Italy. 

In  a  word,  then,  so  far  as  the  other  two  members  of  the  Drei- 
bund  are  concerned,  no  important  reason  obtains  any  longer  for 
their  remaining  in  it;  and  a  number  of  important  reasons  tell 
against  the  further  continuance  of  this  alliance.  For  Germany, 
too,  several  potent  factors  have  come  to  the  surface  which 
make  against  the  Dreibund  as  the  pivotal  point  of  Germany's 
foreign  policy.  The  chief  one,  perhaps,  is  the  military  weakening 
of  both  Austria  and  Italy,  whose  resources,  in  the  event  of  a  future 
big  war,  both  on  land  and  sea,  are,  relatively  speaking,  much 
smaller  now  than  when  the  Dreibund  was  formed.  Aside 
from  that,  however,  in  taking  a  front  place  as  a  world  power, 
Germany  has  had  to  reckon,  and  will  have  in  future  to  reckon, 
with  other  powers  which  are  strong  in  commerce,  in  colonies,  and 
in  naval  force,  these  being  England  and  the  United  States 
Neither  Austria  nor  Italy  has  been  in  a  condition,  nor  willing,  to 
further  Germany's  vital  interests  as  a  sea  power  and  as  an  expan- 
sive commercial  and  colonial  empire.  With  France  and  Russia 
more  closely  than  ever  allied  in  Europe  and  abroad,  and  with 
Germany's  inability  to  attain  to  the  rank  of  the  first  naval  power, 
it  is  manifestly  her  interest  to  put  herself  not  only  on  a  thoroughly 
friendly  footing,  but  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship,  if  not  on 
those  of  a  formal  alliance,  with  the  only  two  powers  that  are,  so 
to  speak,  open  to  such  an  engagement.  This  would  not  mean 
that  Germany  would  entirely  relinquish  her  long-continued 
friendship  with  Italy  and  Austria.  As  far  as  she  is  able  to  do 
so  she  will  tenderly  nurse  those  good  relations ;  but  the  character 
and  importance  of  them,  nevertheless,  will  undergo — has  even 
now  undergone — a  very  great  change.  They  will  henceforth  be 
of  secondary  consideration,  and  by  no  means  the  determining 
factor  in  her  foreign  policy. 

Now,  as  to  England,  the  anomaly  is  presented  that,  while  the 
German  Emperor  and  his  government  are  anxious  to  tighten 
the  political  affiliations  with  that  country,  and  while,  particu- 
larly, the  Kaiser's  strong  sympathies  and  desires  go  out  in  that 
direction,  the  overwhelming  public  opinion  of  Germany  is  averse 
to  this.  It  is  within  the  truth  to  say  that  a  sentiment  of  down- 
right bitter  hostility,  of  a  strength  seldom  equalled  in  his  usually 


GERMANY'S  POLITICAL  TURNING-POINT      53 

placid  bosom,  rages  in  the  breast  of  the  average  German  against 
his  English  cousin  at  the  present  moment.  Sentiment  counts 
for  something  in  that.  The  war  against  the  Boer  republics  was 
all  along  strongly  condemned  in  Germany,  largely  for  sentimental 
reasons;  and  that  feeling  was  so  widespread  and  powerful  that 
even  the  Kaiser,  on  one  or  two  occasions,  and  the  Imperial  Chan- 
cellor, had  to  take  it  into  account.  Other  sentimental  reasons 
lying  further  back  there  also  are;  and  there  is,  besides,  the  fact 
that  England  for  a  time  took  a  somewhat  unfriendly  attitude 
towards  Germany's  colonial  aspirations,  and  that  England  has 
been  Germany's  chief  commercial  rival,  and  not  always  a  gener- 
ous or  fair  one.  At  any  rate,  there  is  no  doubt  that  an  Anglo- 
phile foreign  policy  is  just  now  unpopular  with  the  larger,  and  the 
politically  dominant,  part  of  the  German  people.  The  Liberal 
political  parties  in  Germany,  who  traditionally  favour  such  a 
policy,  are  not  the  determining  factors  in  her  political  life. 

But,  while  all  this  is  true,  it  does  not  mean  that  a  foreign 
policy  friendly  to  England  is  impossible  in  Germany  even  at  this 
moment.  For  the  Kaiser  practically  shapes  her  foreign  policy. 
The  Imperial  Chancellors  since  Bismarck's  retirement  have, 
virtually,  merely  carried  out  their  imperial  master's  behests,  and 
have  vouchsafed  only  that  explanation  to  the  Reichstag  and 
Bundesrath  for  the  steps  taken  or  decided  upon  in  Germany's 
relations  with  other  countries  which  they  saw  fit  and  con- 
sidered safe.  It  is  idle  to  discuss  here  the  question  whether  this 
is  in  strict  consonance  with  the  constitution  of  the  empire.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  such  has  been  the  unvarying  practice  since  the 
Kaiser,  twelve  years  ago,  took  hold  of  the  helm  himself  and  be- 
came, to  use  Bismarck's  expression,  his  own  Chancellor.  And 
that  the  Kaiser  is  strongly  in  favour  of  an  Anglophile  foreign 
policy  there  is  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 

As  to  the  United  States,  things  in  a  measure  are  similar.  When 
the  war  with  Spain  broke  out,  in  the  spring  of  1898,  the  German 
people  violently,  and  almost  altogether  for  sentimental  reasons, 
sided  with  Spain ;  indeed,  until  the  close  of  that  war  the  torrent 
of  popular  abuse  of  the  United  States  flowed  as  fiercely  and  was 
fed  from  as  many  sources  as  that  which  is  now  directed  against 
England.  The  German  Government,  however,  took  a  con- 
sistently friendly  attitude  toward  the  United  States — a  fact 


54  GERMANY 

which  recent  publications  have  brought  out  clearly.  This,  it  may 
be  admitted  here,  was  due  at  first  more  to  Count  von  Buelow — 
then  still  Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs  under  Prince  Hohenlohe — 
than  to  the  Kaiser  personally,  whose  sympathies  for  a  time 
rather  leaned  to  Spain.  But  the  Kaiser  is,  after  all,  Bismarck's 
pupil,  and  as  such  he  considers  concrete  facts  as  of  paramount 
importance.  He  quickly  came  to  see  that  the  United  States  was 
bound  to  be  victorious,  that  Spain  represented  a  lost  cause,  and 
that  the  United  States  would  emerge  from  the  war  much  stronger 
and  more  ambitious  than  ever,  and  become  a  new  and  leading 
factor  in  the  process  of  reshaping  the  world.  He  saw  clearly 
that  Germany's  interests  bade  her  remain  the  best  of  friends  with 
the  United  States ;  and,  once  he  had  recognized  this,  he  frankly 
and  without  reserve  accepted  the  new  situation,  and  shaped  his 
policy  accordingly.  The  relentless  force  of  logic  told  him  that 
the  closer  Germany's  relations  became  with  the  great  American 
republic,  the  better  chance  there  would  be  for  a  friendly  under- 
standing with  it  at  all  those  points  where  its  new  political  or 
commercial  interests  might  clash  with  those  of  Germany.  His 
foresight  has  since  been  proven  true  in  the  settlement  of  the 
Samoa  difficulty,  in  the  acquisition  of  the  Carolines,  and  during 
the  recent  troubles  in  China. 

In  his  political  calculations,  he  took  into  account  the  policy  of 
expansion  to  which  the  dominant  party  in  this  country  stands 
committed,  and  he  has  since  given  adherence  to  the  American 
definition  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Is  he  sincere  in  this  ?  Has 
Germany  absolutely  relinquished  those  old,  but  never  more  than 
half-formed,  designs  upon  West  Indian  and  South  American 
territory  ?  Does  she  consider  herself  bound,  under  all  circum- 
stances, to  abide  by  that  interpretation  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
which  rests,  not  so  much  upon  the  vigorous  yet  withal  conserva- 
tive enunciation  quite  recently  made  by  President  Roosevelt, 
as  upon  that  somewhat  hazy  yet  tangible  and  more  far- 
reaching  idea  of  it  held  by  the  larger  half  of  the  American  people  ? 
Time  alone  will  show.  At  any  rate,  neither  the  Kaiser,  nor  the 
German  Government,  nor  the  even  more  important  public  opinion 
of  Germany,  any  longer  defines  the  Monroe  Doctrine  as  Bismarck 
did  in  my  hearing,  on  May  26,  1898  (two  months  before  his 
death),  as  "a  species  of  arrogance  peculiarly  American  and  quite 


GERMANY'S  POLITICAL  TURNING-POINT      55 

inexcusable. "  True,  the  Pan-Germans  and  the  colonial  enthu- 
siasts in  Germany  continue  to  rail  against  this  "species  of  arro- 
gance"; and  in  a  late  issue  of  the  leading  German  colonial  organ, 
the  Koloniale  Zeitschrift,  Dr.  Rudolf  Breitscheid  declaims 
against  it  and  against  the  alleged  unholy  designs  of  the  United 
States  upon  South  and  Central  America,  and  calls  upon  Count 
von  Buelow  to  quicken  the  pace  of  German  colonization  in  South 
Brazil  and  Argentina.  But  he  and  his  kind  do  not  influence  the 
German  foreign  policy.  There  is  no  manner  of  doubt  that 
Germany  —  Kaiser,  government  and  people  —  is  at  present 
honestly  desirous  of  close  and  friendly  relations  with  the  United 
States. 


POLITICAL    LIFE 

NOTHING  more  characteristic  of  present  German  political  life 
exists  than  the  new  Reichstag  palace.  It  rises,  a  splendid  and 
impressive  edifice,  just  without  the  monumental  Brandenburg 
Gate,  in  Berlin,  its  most  magnificent  fagade  toward  the  broad 
expanse  of  the  Konigsplatz,  and  its  southern  side  turned  toward 
the  fine  old  trees  of  the  Thiergarten.  The  statue  of  Bismarck, 
flanked  by  allegorical  figures,  stands  in  the  centre  of  the  immense 
square  to  the  west,  and  that  grand  old  man  stretches  out  his  hand 
of  bronze  in  the  direction  of  the  pile  where  the  elected  representa- 
tives of  the  nation  legislate  for  its  weal  or  woe,  as  if  to  caution 
and  guide  them.  A  fountain  throws  its  powerful  column  of 
water  into  the  pure  air,  and  from  afar  the  thunder  of  busy  life 
comes  in  a  steady  boom.  Plainly  visible  to  the  west  is  the  golden 
glint  of  the  Column  of  Victory,  whose  massive  shaft  was  welded 
from  guns  taken  by  Germany's  conquering  hosts  during  three 
successive  wars,  each  swift,  terrible  and  glorious. 

The  Reichstag  is  an  immense  structure,  built  throughout 
of  graystone,  and  in  that  architectural  style  termed  the  German 
renaissance.  Rich  sculptures  everywhere  embellish  portals, 
windows,  pilasters  and  roof,  and  several  gigantic  figures  in  dark 
bronze  heighten  the  artistic  effect.  The  building  was  paid  for 
out  of  the  French  war  indemnity.  Inside,  too,  the  eye  is  grati- 
fied. The  great  lobby,  all  in  white  marble,  and  a  flood  of  light 
pouring  down  upon  it  from  the  enormous  gilt  cupola,  is  stately 
and  beautiful.  The  session  hall,  with  its  wealth  of  stained  glass, 
its  bright  colours  on  ceiling  and  cornices,  and  its  light  yellow 
oak  on  walls  and  galleries,  makes  a  fit  setting  for  the  dignified 
body  of  men  who  here,  for  nine  months  of  the  year,  discuss 
national  affairs  and  frame  the  laws  of  the  country.  The  com- 
mittee rooms  are  handsomely  and  appropriately  furnished,  and 
the  spacious  reading  rooms  and  library  give  ample  facilities  for 

56 


POLITICAL  LIFE  57 

nutrimentum  spiritiis.  In  fine,  nothing  could  be  more  appro- 
priate or  suitable  for  its  purposes. 

But  when  examining  all  this  a  bit  more  closely,  a  number  of 
things  strike  the  observer.  The  events  and  persons  everywhere 
glorified  by  the  numberless  works  of  art  adorning  this  palace 
of  the  people  are  wars  and  rulers.  Dynasties  and  their  obedient 
servants  are  shining  down  from  glowing  glass  and  burnished 
frame.  The  carved  and  fretted  symbols  that  decorate  the  walls 
speak  exclusively  the  same  language.  Nowhere  is  there  made 
the  slightest  attempt  to  recognize  the  virtues,  the  sacrifices,  the 
deeds  or  rights  of  the  people,  of  its  representatives,  champions, 
or  spokesmen.  Nowhere  is  there  a  sign  that  this  fine  building 
arose  at  the  will  of,  and  with  the  money  appropriated  by,  the 
nation's  representatives.  No  motto,  no  inscription  indicates 
or  even  hints  at  it.  This  palace  was  built  after  plans  approved 
and  in  every  detail  directed  by  the  present  Kaiser.  It  stands 
as  an  eloquent  witness  to  the  fact  that  you  are  in  an  intensely 
monarchical  country,  in  a  country  where  everything  is  of  the 
monarch,  by  the  monarch,  and  for  the  monarch.  This  new 
Reichstag  building  is  the  very  essence  and  outflow  of  the  Kaiser's 
masterful  spirit. 

If  any  more  proof  of  that,  however,  were  needed,  it  is  but 
necessary  to  enter  the  big  session  hall  and  attend  an  average 
meeting  of  the  delegates.  The  session  is  opened  and  closed 
with  cheers  for  His  Majesty.  Whenever  one  of  the  speakers 
attempts  to  criticize  or  even  to  name  the  Emperor,  the  presi- 
dent, worthy  old  Count  Ballestrem,  with  an  unctuous  and  dis- 
approving shake  of  his  silver  locks,  warns  the  offender  that  he 
is  infringing  on  the  "Brauch  des  Hauses"  (custom  of  the  house), 
and  nips  his  ambition  in  the  bud.  There  is  no  constitutional 
barrier  against  such  criticism;  on  the  contrary,  the  constitution 
of  the  empire  explicitly  permits  it.  But  the  "custom  of  the 
house,"  as  it  has  grown  up  under  a  majority  of  time-serving 
Conservatives  and  their  allies,  forbids  the  practical  exercise  of 
this  constitutional  privilege.  With  the  exception  of  an  occa- 
sional Socialist  or  radical  Liberal  speaker,  such  a  phrase  as 
"rights  of  the  people"  is  not  even  heard  in  this  hall. 

And  this  is  the  body  which  of  all  others  in  Germany  is  sup- 
posed to  watch  over  and  defend  these  same  rights  of  the  people  ! 


S8  GERMANY 

With  a  spirit  so  glaringly  subservient  to  the  will  and  pleasure 
of  an  autocrat,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  Reichstag,  as  a  body, 
has  more  and  more  lost  the  confidence  of  the  nation. 

But  that  is  not  the  only  reason  for  the  moral  decadence  into 
which  the  Reichstag  has  sunk.  An  even  more  potent  one  is 
its  disintegration.  There  is  no  party  rule  in  Germany.  There 
cannot  be  under  existing  conditions.  The  397  members  com- 
posing this  body  legislating  for  the  Empire  are  divided  and 
subdivided  into  a  score  of  factions  and  particles  of  factions, 
the  difference  in  political  creed  between  them  often  amounting, 
indeed,  to  the  splitting  of  hairs.  It  is  the  old  Teutonic  spirit, 
the  spirit  which  Bismarck  and  so  many  great  Germans  have  al- 
ways deplored,  the  spirit  which  is  almost  solely  responsible  for  all 
the  misfortunes,  reverses,  and  calamities  that  have  befallen  the 
German  nation  since  the  dawn  of  its  history — the  spirit  of  fac- 
tional strife,  of  discord,  and  of  mutual  and  petty  jealousy.  And 
yet,  be  it  said,  nobody  has  done  as  much  as  Bismarck  himself  to 
breed  and  foster  this  spirit.  To  play  off  one  party  against 
Another,  to  allow  none  a  share  of  the  government,  and  to  rule 
supreme  by  dividing  them  all — that  was  his  unbending  policy 
in  shaping  and  dominating  parliamentary  legislation.  The 
deplorable  state  of  impotence  to  which  the  Reichstag  is  to-day 
reduced  is  very  largely  due  to  this  Machiavellian  policy.  To 
judge  from  present  indications,  the  process  of  disintegration  has 
not  even  reached  its  limit.  Within  the  recent  past  two  new 
factions — the  League  of  Husbandry  and  the  Bavarian  Peasant 
Federation,  have  come  into  existence,  and  the  number  of 
Independents — i.  e.,  members  unaffiliated  with  any  faction, 
has  in  the  same  time  largely  increased. 

However,  despite  this  curious  splitting  up  into  relatively 
small  fragments,  it  is  nevertheless  not  difficult  to  describe  the 
component  parts  of  the  Reichstag,  and  to  show  how,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  the  dominant  majority  is  formed. 
What  in  common  parlance  might  be  styled  the  government 
party  in  it  is  made  up  from  the  two  Conservative  factions  (num- 
bering in  all  91),  the  Centre  (or  Catholic  Ultramontane  faction, 
with  107  votes),  and  a  larger  or  smaller  portion  of  the  National 
Liberal  faction  (at  present  reduced  to  49),  with  occasional 
accessions  from  the  ranks  of  the  other  factions  or  subfactions, 


POLITICAL  LIFE  59 

and  Independents.  This,  in  ordinary  cases,  gives  the  govern- 
ment a  good  working  majority  of  25  to  50.  Ordinary  occasions 
in  the  above  sense  are  legislation  concerning  the  army  and  navy, 
the  budget,  the  tariff,  and  tax  questions.  On  religious  matters,  on 
education,  and  on  a  great  many  others,  there  is  no  solid  phalanx 
either  way,  and  it  often  happens  that  on  this  kind  of  legislation 
a  majority  for  the  government  is  formed  from  its  opponents 
in  principle,  including  the  extreme  Radicals  and  the  Socialists. 

There  are  many  bills  drawn  up  by  either  individual  members 
or  by  factions  or  a  group  of  factions  in  the  course  of  a  Reichstag 
session,  and  presented  to  that  body  for  consideration.  But  the 
important  bills,  and  the  larger  portion  of  those  ultimately  be- 
coming laws,  have  been  carefully  prepared  and  phrased  by  the 
government  in  its  various  departments,  and  have  been  passed 
by  the  Bundesrath,  before  they  reach  the  Reichstag.  In  other 
words,  relatively  few  and  certainly  no  very  important  bills 
originate  in  the  Reichstag  itself.  But  even  the  bills  thus  origi- 
nating do  not,  as  a  rule,  become  laws.  The  Bundesrath,  whose 
province  and  whose  powers  are  more  extensive  than  those  of  the 
Reichstag,  and  to  whom  all  bills  passed  by  the  latter  body  have 
to  go,  usually  refuses  to  sanction  them.  Perhaps  the  most 
glaring  case  in  point  is  the  bill  providing  compensation  for  the 
services  of  the  Reichstag  delegates.  This  bill  has  been  passed, 
each  time  with  a  larger  majority,  by  the  Reichstag  year  after 
year,  ever  since  the  Reichstag  itself  came  into  existence,  thirty- 
one  years  ago.  Bismarck  had  purposely  avoided  fixing  such 
compensation,  in  the  belief  that  this  would  keep  Socialist  dele- 
gates and  other  representatives  of  the  lower  and  politically 
radical-minded  classes  out  of  the  Reichstag.  But  he  had  reck- 
oned without  his  host,  for  the  Socialists  have  all  along  paid  a 
modest  per  diem  allowance  to  their  representatives  out  of  party 
funds,  the  only  party  or  faction  in  Germany,  by  the  way,  that 
has  followed  this  practice.  No  matter  how  often  the  Reichstag 
has  passed  this  bill,  however,  the  Bundesrath  has  always 
promptly  rejected  it. 

Generally  speaking,  the  code  of  parliamentary  rules  governing 
the  Reichstag  is  neither  so  comprehensive  nor  so  exacting  as  in 
either  the  English  Parliament  or  our  Congress.  Nor  are  breaches 
of  these  rules  so  severely  or  summarily  dealt  with.  The  presiding 


60  GERMANY 

officer  not  infrequently  makes  mistakes  in  applying  the  rules  of  the 
house,  but  appeals  from  his  decision  are  rarely  taken,  and  much 
forbearance  and  good  humour  are  displayed  in  this  respect.  Parlia- 
mentary customs  are  fashioned  more  after  those  obtaining  in  the 
French  Chamber  of  Deputies  than  after  English  or  American  ones. 
Reichstag  sessions  are  often  dull.  The  phlegmatic  temper  of 
the  average  German  has  something  to  do  with  that,  for  it  is  sel- 
dom that  speakers  lose  their  temper,  or  that  their  listeners  indulge 
in  witty,  humourous,  or  abusive  interruptions,  sallies,  or  shouts. 
There  being,  besides,  relatively  few  young  men  among  the  mem- 
bers, the  whole  tone  of  the  House  is  rather  dignified,  subdued  and 
calm.  The  decorum  preserved  is  admirable.  Billingsgate,  un- 
couth or  indecent  language  are  never  indulged  in,  and  personal 
insults  are  extremely  rare.  As  a  rule,  the  current  of  talk  flows 
on  rather  sluggishly,  and  many  of  the  members  can  then  be  seen 
dozing  or  peacefully  slumbering  in  their  seats.  Friends  of  mem- 
bers, or  constituents  who  wish  to  speak  with  them,  are  never 
allowed  on  the  floor  of  the  House,  but  must  always  state  their 
business  first  in  writing  to  one  of  the  handsomely  uniformed 
Reichstag  servants,  who  thereupon  informs  the  member,  and  the 
latter  will  see  his  man  outside  in  the  lobby  or  in  one  of  the  com- 
mittee rooms.  Reached  by  separate  stairs  outside,  galleries  run 
around  three  sides  of  the  session  hall,  about  twenty  feet  above 
the  floor  of  the  house.  These  are  separated  from  each  other,  so 
as  to  make  intercommunication  impossible.  One  of  them 
contains  a  very  spacious  box  over  the  row  of  seats  occupied 
by  the  Conservatives,  and  this  is  reserved  for  the  exclusive  use 
of  the  imperial  court,  and  of  other  personages  sent  by  the  Kaiser 
to  attend  certain  sessions  in  whose  results  he  is  interested.  On 
gala  days  this  and  the  diplomatic  box  adjoining  are  often  filled 
with  a  highly  distinguished  audience,  brilliantly  attired  court 
ladies,  army  and  naval  officers  wearing  high  decorations,  and 
occasionally  even  princes  of  the  blood.  The  Kaiser,  however, 
has  personally  never  visited  the  inside  of  the  session  hall.* 

*The  gallery  for  the  press  contains  seats  for  about  sixty  reporters  and 
correspondents,  and  when  crowded  to  its  utmost  capacity  accommodates 
about  200.  It  is  right  above  the  Socialist  row  of  seats — a  significant 
fact,  and  the  acoustics  of  the  hall  being  wretched,  it  is  impossible  to  hear 
with  understanding  any  but  the  very  best  speakers — *.  e.,  best  in  enuncia- 
tion and  quality  of  voice.  The  press  up  there  has,  therefore,  to  preserve 
a  respectful  silence  during  the  proceedings,  oa  pain  of  "  botching  "  the 
work  in  hand,  and  also  because  offenders  are  summarily  expelled. 


POLITICAL  LIFE  61 

One  other  reason  for  the  dullness  usually  prevailing  during 
Reichstag  sessions  is  the  general  absence  of  oratory.  Few 
Germans  are  fluent  or  impressive  speakers.  This  is  as  much 
due  to  the  language  itself,  which  in  its  grammar  is  difficult  and 
in  its  syntax  still  more  so,  full  of  pitfalls  for  the  unwary  or  hasty 
speaker,  as  it  is  owing  to  the  recentness  of  German  parliamentar- 
ism and  to  the  complete  lack  of  any  tuition  or  systematic  train- 
ing in  public  speaking.  German  education  has  so  far  neglected 
this  field.  There  are  no  courses  in  elocution  in  either  colleges 
or  universities,  nor  even  in  private  schools.  Neither  are  there 
debating  societies  or  clubs  in  existence  where  the  nascent  rhetor- 
ician might  develop  his  talents.  The  genius  of  the  nation  does 
not  incline  that  way,  and  "fine  speaking"  is  not  only  not  ad- 
mired, but  it  is  positively  looked  upon  with  suspicion  and  disdain. 
That  form  of  "spread-eagleism"  which  exists,  too,  in  German 
legislative  bodies  is  essentially  different  in  form — not  so  pictur- 
esque, nor  so  exuberant  in  fancy,  but  more  rugged  and  homely 
than  the  American  species.  The  most  perfect  specimens  in 
Germany  of  this  type  of  rhetoric  are  Liebermann  von 
Sonnenberg,  the  rabid  anti-Semite,  and  Doctor  Hasse,  the 
Pan-German  leader.  Both  possess  in  a  high  degree  the  gift  of 
touching  certain  chords  in  the  German  soul. 

But  while  deficient  in  oratory,  as  that  much-abused  word  is 
commonly  understood,  the  German  parliament  possesses  a  num- 
ber of  earnest,  forcible  and  convincing  speakers,  and  on  "great 
days,"  when  subjects  are  under  discussion  that  fire  the  national 
heart,  the  sessions  are  interesting  enough.  The  most  impas- 
sioned speaker — now  that  old  Liebknecht  is  dead — is  by  all  odds 
August  Bebel,  the  Socialist  veteran.  His  style  of  speaking 
indeed  approaches  nearest  to  the  American.  He  is  fluent, 
uses  his  resonant  voice  to  good  advantage,  thrills,  hypnotizes, 
transfixes  his  hearers — opponents  even  more  than  friends.  He 
always  goes  into  his  subject  heart  and  soul,  and  is  fairly  tireless. 
As  he  warms  up  to  his  work,  after  the  first  half-hour  or  so,  he 
has  captured  the  whole  house.  From  the  benches  on  the  Right, 
where  the  aristocrats  of  birth  sit,  these  gentlemen  of  immaculate 
linen  and  daintily  pointed  mustache  come  crowding  around  the 
high  desk  behind  which  this  leader  of  the  unwashed  multitude 
stands,  his  strongly  marked  face  aglow  with  very  genuine  excite- 


62  GERMANY 

ment,  his  unkempt  beard  quaking,  and  his  vitriolic  eloquence 
pouring  forth  like  a  resistless  torrent.  The  toiling  masses  in 
the  Empire  have  no  more  dauntless  or  unsparing  champion 
than  him.  Up  in  the  galleries  court  ladies  press  scented  lace  to 
their  eyes  as  he  depicts  the  sufferings  of  the  lower  classes  or  de- 
claims with  burning  words  against  tyranny.  He  is  a  fanatic 
by  conviction,  and  it  is  that  which  lends  peculiar  force  to  his 
vibrating  periods.  As  a  coiner  of  striking  similes  and  metaphors 
he  has  not  his  like  in  the  Reichstag. 

As  popular  a  speaker,  and  likewise  of  the  opposition,  though 
a  man  of  wholly  different  fibre,  is  Eugene  Richter,  he  who  often 
crossed  swords  with  Bismarck  in  the  Reichstag,  and  usually 
vanquished  the  grim  Chancellor.  Finance  and  budget  matters 
are  his  specialty,  and  these  dry  topics  this  radical  veteran  knows 
how  to  invest  with  such  a  brilliant  array  of  witticisms,  humour- 
ous allusions,  anecdotes,  and  sarcasm,  as  to  hold  the  house  spell- 
bound. Richter  has  passed  his  whole  lifetime  in  parliamentary 
struggles,  and  he  knows  the  finances  of  Prussia  and  of  the  empire 
better  than  the  whole  government,  past  and  present,  put  to- 
gether, and  has  convicted  of  serious  errors  scores  of  finance 
secretaries.  In  England,  Eugene  Richter  would  have  become 
a  Gladstone  or  a  Goschen;  in  Prussia  he  edits  an  excellent  paper 
of  small  circulation.  Dr.  Theodore  Barth,  also  a  radical  Liberal 
and  in  some  respects  the  younger  and  fresher  type  of  Richter, 
is  likewise  a  convincing  and  able  speaker.  As  the  best-equipped 
and  stanchest  friend  of  this  country  in  both  the  Reichstag  and 
the  Prussian  Diet,  he  is,  of  course,  the  special  bete  noire  of  the 
Agrarians  in  both  houses.  Doctor  Paasche,  Bassermann,  and 
Doctor  Lehr  are  able  speakers  among  the  National  Liberals. 
The  members  of  the  Polish  faction,  thirteen  in  number,  are 
nearly  all  fluent  and  passionate  speakers. 

Among  the  Socialists,  Singer,  Auer,  and  von  Vollmar,  but 
especially  Bernstein,  may  also  be  mentioned  as  forcible  and 
competent  orators.  What  makes  von  Vollmar  more  impres- 
sive than  the  others  is  his  past  and  his  personality.  From  a 
member  of  the  privileged  classes,  from  a  brave  officer  who  fought 
in  the  war  against  France  with  such  distinction  as  to  win  the 
highest  decoration  for  bravery,  the  iron  cross,  he  has  become 
one  of  the  fiercest  champions  of  the  lower  classes.  When  he 


POLITICAL  LIFE  63 

climbs  with  some  difficulty  up  the  steps  that  lead  to  the  speaker's 
stand,  the  French  bullet  which  lamed  him  for  life  still  occasioning 
him  much  discomfort,  his  pale  and  handsome  face  as  cold  as 
marble,  there  is  none  of  his  erstwhile  companions-in-arms  on  the 
aristocratic  side  of  the  house  who  does  not  feel  a  throb  of  in- 
voluntary respect.  Among  the  Conservatives  there  are  few 
good  speakers;  one  may,  however,  mention  von  Kardorff,  von 
Manteuffel,  Count  Kanitz  and  Doctor  Arendt.  But  not  one  of 
them  is  able  to  command  at  any  time  the  undivided  attention 
of  the  house.  Prince  Herbert  Bismarck,  the  little  son  of  a  great 
father,  is  one  of  the  poorest  speakers  there.  Among  the  South 
Germans  it  is  especially  Conrad  Haussmann,  leader  of  the  small 
Democratic  faction,  who  deserves  notice.  He  is  impressive  and 
caustic,  and  is  the  only  non-Socialist  in  the  house  who  occasion- 
ally defies  the  "custom  of  the  house,"  and  its  president  to  boot, 
by  arraigning  in  biting  words  the  crowned  head  of  Germany. 
Among  the  Alsatian  "protesters"  the  Abbe"  Wetterle"  is  the  ablest 
and  most  resourceful  orator,  but  his  rhetoric  is  French,  not 
German,  and  generally  misses,  therefore,  its  aim  in  a  German 
audience.  The  recent  death  of  Doctor  Lieber  has  robbed  the 
Ultramontane  Centre  not  only  of  its  greatest  party  strategist, 
but  also  of  its  greatest  speaker.  Doctor  Bachem,  of  Cologne, 
Doctor  Groeber  and  Doctor  Spahn  are  now  the  oratorical  towers 
of  strength  of  the  Catholic  faction.* 

In  the  Reichstag  and  in  the  other  German  legislative  bodies 
it  is  the  custom,  as  in  France  and  England,  for  the  government 
to  send  members  of  the  cabinet  and  department  chiefs  into 
parliamentary  sessions  in  order  to  furnish  special  information 
and  answer  interpellations  or  attacks  made  by  members.  This 
has,  of  course,  occasionally  an  enlivening  effect  upon  sessions, 
though  in  the  main  these  government  representatives  make  a 
point  of  preserving  a  great  outward  dignity,  and  seldom  say 
much,  even  when  they  talk  enough.  Count  von  Buelow,  the 
Imperial  Chancellor,  is  in  some  respects  an  exception  to  this  rule. 
Of  course,  he  has  not  a  tithe  of  the  prestige  which  Bismarck 
enjoyed,  either  as  a  parliamentary  speaker  or  as  a  statesman. 

^Affiliated  with  Doctor  Earth's  radical  Liberal  faction  is  Prince  Emil 
Schonaich-Carolath,  popularly  known  as  the  "Red  Prince  "  because  of 
his  advanced  political  views.  This  gentleman  is  a  voluble  speaker 
enough,  but  a  much  better  poet  aad  writer. 


64  GERMANY 

When  it  was  known  that  Bismarck  would  speak,  the  pressure  of 
the  public  to  gain  admittance  in  the  Reichstag  used  to  be  terrific, 
and  the  interest  manifested  intense.  This  was  purely  due  to  the 
matter,  not  to  the  manner,  with  which  he  regaled  his  hearers,  for 
that  mighty  man  of  brain  and  brawn,  physical  colossus  though 
he  was,  had  a  voice  very  disproportionate  to  his  massive  frame. 
It  was  high-pitched,  thin  and  grating,  and  altogether  of  an  un- 
pleasant quality,  besides  which  his  mode  of  delivery  was  jerky, 
halting,  and  uncertain — he  would  often  come  to  a  complete 
stop,  painfully  striving  to  hit  upon  the  words  expressing  his 
nimbler  thoughts.  But  there  were  great  ideas,  bold  conceptions, 
in  what  he  said,  and  many  of  his  phrases,  struck  off  fresh  from 
the  forge  of  his  mind,  will  live  forever,  so  pregnant  and  inspiring 
were  they.  Buechner's  "Winged  Words"  contains  a  large  number 
of  them.  In  the  case  of  Count  von  Buelow,  whom  his  admirers 
love  to  call  a  pupil  of  Bismarck,  it  is  quite  otherwise.  He  is, 
it  must  be  remembered,  a  diplomat  purely  and  simply,  and  he 
plainly  shows  the  virtues  and  failings  of  one.  There  is  none  of 
that  subdued  fire,  that  deep  earnestness,  which  made  the  words 
of  his  great  master  living,  sentient  potentialities.  Instead,  he 
is  fluent,  almost  glib,  happy  in  graceful,  pretty  similes  and 
parables,  paying  a  dainty  little  compliment  to  the  one  party, 
and  administering  a  waspish,  venomous  sting  to  the  other, 
calmly  and  elegantly  gliding  over  the  surface  of  the  topics  he 
handles,  but  never  by  any  chance  going  deep  down  to  the  very 
core  of  a  matter.  With  an  almost  Gallic  wit  he  indulges  in 
cleverly  worded  sallies,  cracks  jokes,  relates  anecdotes,  gives 
full  play  to  his  lively  imagination,  and  amuses  everybody. 
Now  and  then  he  coins  a  new  catch  phrase,  as  when  he  com- 
pared the  "concert  of  the  powers"  to  an  orchestra,  now  well 
directed,  now  playing  out  of  tune,  and  adding  that  Germany, 
whenever  harmony  had  turned  into  discord,  would  quietly  lay 
down  her  flute  and  step  out  of  the  orchestra.  But  that  is  an 
exception — as  a  rule,  reading  over  Buelow's  speeches  in  cold 
type,  minus  the  charm  of  personal  manner  and  the  facile  grace 
of  gesture,  they  appear  rather  commonplace  and  devoid  of  vi- 
tality. Nevertheless,  in  the  kingdom  of  the  blind  the  one-eyed 
man  is  king — among  the  government  speakers  he  is  facile  princeps. 
For  the  initiated  it  is  amusing  to  watch  him  then,  and  particu- 


POLITICAL  LIFE  65 

larly  the  careful  and  minute  mise  en  scene  set  by  his  underlings. 
I  remember  one  such  occasion.  I  happened  to  have  obtained 
from  the  lips  of  the  American  ambassador  in  Berlin,  Mr.  White, 
the  distinct  and  formal  news  that  a  definite  understanding  had 
been  effected  between  Germany,  the  United  States  and  England 
as  to  the  final  settlement  of  the  Samoan  squabble,  including  the 
actual  terms  of  this  understanding.  This  information  was 
given  me  early  in  the  afternoon,  and  I  cabled  it  in  full  to  this 
country.  The  next  noon,  twenty  hours  after,  a  session  of  the 
Reichstag  took  place,  and  the  morning  papers  threw  out  dark 
hints  that  some  great  news  of  startling  import  was  to  be  vouch- 
safed at  this  session  by  Count  von  Buelow.  At  the  Foreign  Office 
in  Berlin  they  claimed  not  to  know  of  any  settlement,  and  no 
German  or  foreign  correspondent  was  given  the  above  news, 
nor  was  able  to  obtain  confirmation  of  it.  This  was,  of  course,  a 
tiny  but  deep-laid  plot  by  the  Imperial  Chancellor  to  prevent 
the  news  from  leaking  out  before  he  had  imparted  it,  with  dra- 
matic effect,  to  the  representatives  of  the  nation.  And  after  the 
session  had  been  solemnly  opened,  Count  von  Buelow  ascended 
the  speaker's  stand  with  the  mien  of  an  haruspex  and  delivered, 
in  a  highly  impressive  manner,  what  purported  to  be  a  great  and 
exclusive  piece  of  news.  His  little  trick  worked  to  perfection 
and  nobody  in  the  house  except  one  was  aware  of  its  being  a 
trick.  This  little  incident  is,  however,  highly  characteristic  of 
him.  He  is  a  man  accomplishing  little  ends  by  little  means 
— a  diplomat,  not  a  statesman. 

Impressive  in  his  own  peculiar  way  is  also  Count  Posadowsky, 
the  Imperial  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  and  the  man  who  would 
like  to  step  into  Buelow's  shoes.  He  is  tall,  has  strongly  marked 
features,  with  a  long  and  flowing  beard  to  set  them  off,  and  loves 
to  unroll  a  long  list  of  statistics  which  he  then  proceeds  to  illu- 
minate in  a  more  or  less  startling  and  graphic  manner.  Some 
years  ago  he  was  the  first,  in  a  Reichstag  budget  debate,  to 
draw  attention  to  the  "American  danger"  in  international  com- 
merce. He  has  more  solid  attainments  than  Buelow,  but  lacks 
almost  altogether  that  gentleman's  easy  and  unctuous  manner, 
and  also  his  gift  of  saying  platitudes  with  infinite  solemnity. 

Buelow  is  very  careful  how  he  handles  the  Socialists  in  the 
Reichstag,  for  they  are  more  than  a  match  for  him  there.  Bebel 


66  GERMANY 

on  one  occasion,  in  a  half-hour's  speech,  utterly  demolished  von 
Buelow's  smooth  eloquence  by  disproving,  one  after  the  other, 
all  his  statements.  Like  Chamberlain  in  England,  von  Buelow  is 
very  neat  and  tidy,  almost  fastidious,  in  his  appearance,  but 
while  his  British  prototype  prefers  an  orchid  as  a  boutonniere, 
his  German  imitator  likes  a  white  camellia  or  chrysanthemum 
in  his  buttonhole.  By  that  anybody  going  into  the  Reichstag 
can  usually  pick  him  out. 

It  would  be  a  futile  and  thankless  task  to  go  here  into  an 
elaborate  and  detailed  description  of  all  the  factions  represented 
in  Germany.  For  one  thing,  even  after  such  a  description,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  the  reader  would  have  obtained  a  clear  idea 
of  it  all.  Besides  the  parties  and  particles  composing,  for  in- 
stance, the  Reichstag,  there  are  scores  of  other  political  organiza- 
tions making  up  the  independent  legislatures  of  the  twenty-six 
separate  German  States,  and  the  names  given  to  a  number  of 
these  differ  greatly,  and  many  of  these  names  acquire  other 
meanings  in  some  of  these  State  bodies.  For  most  purposes  it 
will  suffice  if  some  mention  be  made  here  of  a  few  of  the  main 
organizations,  and  to  point  out  some  of  their  peculiar  features. 

In  the  Reichstag  one  is  struck,  for  example,  by  the  strange 
fact  that  it  contains  numerically  about  one-fourth  of  the  total 
membership  in  factions  whose  entire  programme,  or  at  least  its 
vital  part,  consists  in  repudiating  and  protesting  against  the 
existing  government  and  the  present  order  of  things.  Besides 
the  large  Socialist  faction  of  62  (which  is  treated  rather  fully  in 
a  separate  chapter),  there  are  of  these:  The  Polish  faction  (13), 
the  Alsace-Lorraine  faction  (10),  the  Hanoverian  faction  (4),  the 
Danish  faction  (i),  and  a  number  of  Independents,  all  of  whom 
"protest"  against  the  state  of  annexation  and  amalgamation 
of  their  native  soil  and  nationality  by  Prussia  or  Germany. 
This  interesting  fact  seldom  becomes  apparent,  however, 
to  the  visitor  in  the  Reichstag,  for  these  members  do  not, 
as  a  rule,  take  part  in  either  the  debates  or  in  the  committee 
work,  excepting  when  the  narrowly  circumscribed  interests  of 
their  constituents  are  involved,  which  happens,  perhaps,  once 
or  twice  during  a  whole  season.  The  rest  of  the  time  they  re- 
main supine,  and  content  themselves  with  the  consciousness  that 
their  mere  presence  there  is  a  living  protest. 


POLITICAL  LIFE  67 

In  Alsace-Lorraine  a  change  of  sentiment  is  slowly  being 
wrought.  Part  of  these  provinces — in  German  politically 
called  the  "  Reichslande,  "  or  "  Lands  belonging  to  the  Empire,  " 
and  which  have  no  separate  sovereign  beside  the  head  of 
the  whole  nation,  but  are  governed  by  an  Imperial  Stadtholder — 
are  now  resigned  to  their  separation  from  France,  but  the  larger 
part  is  still  irredentist,  and  submits  with  an  ill  grace  to  the 
inevitable.  This  is  especially  the  case  in  Upper  Alsace  (the  dis- 
trict comprising  Mulhouse,  and  stretching  along  the  Swiss  fron- 
tier up  to  Belfort  and  Montbeliard)  and  in  the  French-speaking 
portion  of  Lorraine,  around  Metz.  Several  times  Alsatian  con- 
stituencies have  elected  Socialists  into  the  Reichstag,  like  Bueb 
and  Bebel,  and  the  densely  populated  industrial  districts  will 
no  doubt  one  day  become  permanently  the  legitimate  prey  of 
the  Socialist  propaganda.  But  the  larger  portion  of  this  fertile 
and  progressive  region  is,  in  its  policy  of  "protest,"  under  the 
domination  and  leadership  of  the  Catholic  clergy  there,  who 
naturally  object  most  strongly  to  amalgamation  with  a  Protes- 
tant country  like  Germany.  The  bitterest  and  most  resourceful 
"protest"  delegates,  therefore,  which  the  annexed  French  prov- 
inces sent  to  the  Reichstag,  have  been  Catholic  priests  and 
abbots,  and  they,  too,  have  owned  and  edited  most  of  the 
Alsatian  journals  in  which  the  hope  of  ultimate  reunion  with 
France  has  been  steadily  held  out.  But  even  their  opposition 
is  no  longer  so  violent,  and  there  are  signs  of  a  slow  process  of 
eliminating  the  fiercer  and  irreconcilable  "protesters,"  many  of 
the  latter  still  drifting  to  France.  No  difficulty  has  been  ex- 
perienced from  the  start  with  the  Alsatians  and  Lorrainers  in 
the  German  army.  This  is  owing,  of  course,  in  part  to  the 
cautious  policy  pursued  of  avoiding  the  formation  of  military 
bodies  made  up  largely  or  wholly  of  these  men  from  the  "  Reichs- 
lande, "  who  instead  have  been  apportioned  to  the  various 
regiments  in  Germany,  where  they  imbibed  more  or  less  German 
sentiment,  had  to  cultivate  a  knowledge  of  the  German  language, 
and  became  acquainted  with  the  real  sentiments  of  the  nation  at 
large.  Returning,  these  men  have  often  become  the  best  and 
most  useful  advocates  of  reconciliation.  But  aside  from  that, 
the  men  of  these  former  French  provinces  have  always  been  good 
and  willing  soldiers,  which  the  names  of  many  of  the  best  and 


68  GERMANY 

most  successful  generals  during  the  reign  of  the  two  Napoleons 
attest.  Their  natural  inclination  gets  the  better  of  them,  so  to 
speak,  under  the  new  regime.  The  German  government  does 
everything  to  hasten  and  facilitate  this  process  of  winning  over 
the  inhabitants  of  the  "  Reichslande, "  of  course,  but  it  has  not 
always  been  happy  in  its  choice  of  means  to  bring  this  about. 
The  Kaiser  has  exerted  great  influence  in  this  direction,  by 
captivating  the  lively  imagination  of  the  Alsace- Lorrainers,  who 
love,  like  the  French,  a  dashing  soldier  for  a  sovereign,  and  by 
showing  the  population  many  favours.  The  fact  that  he  has 
enlarged  and  beautified  his  fine  estate  near  Courcelles,  not  far 
from  Metz,  and  that  he  spends  some  time  there  with  his  family 
every  year,  has  heightened  this  effect.  Then,  too,  the  domestic 
and  foreign  policy  of  France  has  for  a  number  of  recent  years  had 
a  deterrent  influence  on  the  people  of  these  provinces.  In  this 
connection  the  Dreyfus  affair  has  done  much,  and  the  close 
political  affiliation  with  Russia  is  also  looked  upon  by  them  with 
disfavour. 

The  Danish  faction  (of  one  member)  exerts,  of  course,  no 
influence  upon  the  Reichstag;  neither  does  the  Guelph,  or 
Hanoverian  faction,  which,  aside  from  its  numerical  weakness, 
has  never  enjoyed  much  sympathy  in  Germany,  and  this  for  a 
variety  of  reasons.  The  population  of  this  Prussian  province 
enjoys  indisputably  a  far  larger  measure  of  prosperity  under 
its  present  rule  than  it  did  under  its  last  Guelph  king,  blind  and 
obstinate  George  V,  and  the  larger  part  of  the  province  is  fully 
reconciled.  It  is  very  different,  though,  with  the  thirteen 
members  composing  the  Polish  delegation. 

Another  anomaly,  and  in  a  sense  more  striking  still,  which  the 
observer  notices  in  the  Reichstag,  is  the  fact  that  in  an  over- 
whelmingly Protestant  country  like  Germany,  with  its  36,000,000 
of  Protestants  against  20,000,000  of  Catholics,  the  Centre  (or 
Catholic  Ultramontane  party)  has  become  the  dominating  factor 
in  her  political  life.  There  must  have  been  gravely  disturbing 
elements  at  work  to  effect  such  a  reversal  of  natural  conditions — 
that  is  the  inevitable  inference.  It  was  the  "  Culturkampf , " 
so  called,  the  fiercely  fought  battle  between  the  Catholic  hier- 
archy and  the  Protestant  State,  which  Bismarck  brought  to  a 
climax  in  the  seventies,  and  which  has  been  mainly  responsible 


POLITICAL  LIFE  69 

for  the  fact  that  the  largest  political  faction  in  Reichstag  and 
Diet  was  formed,  and  maintained  itself  ever  since,  on  the  simple 
lines  of  its  religious  faith.  The  Centre  has  now  one  hundred  and 
seven  members  in  the  Reichstag,  with  a  constituency  of  about 
1,800,000  voters.  It  is  the  mightiest  single  factor  in  domestic 
politics.  It  is,  of  course,  composed  of  otherwise  very  hetero- 
geneous elements — side  by  side  with  Prince  Arenberg,  whose 
title  is  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  honourable  in  the  empire, 
sits  another  member  of  the  Centre  in  whose  veins  flows  churlish 
peasant  blood;  and  the  wealthy  Catholic  manufacturer  of  Cologne 
meets  in  the  same  committee  a  party  member  whose  class  in- 
terests are  diametrically  opposed  to  his  own.  The  single  co- 
hesive force  binding  together  this  mass  of  men  from  every  walk 
of  life  is  their  religious  creed — a  unique  thing  in  international 
politics.  This  is  not  enough,  though,  to  make  them  a  unit  on  a 
great  number  of  questions  that  come  up  for  legislative  solution, 
and  on  these  they  often  split.  "Windthorst,  physically  the 
smallest  but  intellectually  the  most  gigantic  of  Bismarck's  foes 
in  Germany,  welded  the  Centre  together  for  a  couple  of  decades, 
displaying  consummate  generalship  during  all  crises  that  his 
party  weathered  in  the  German  Parliament.  After  his  death. 
Doctor  Lieber,  recently  deceased,  continued  his  work,  though 
in  a  more  conciliatory  mood. 

The  make-up  of  the  Conservative  faction,  in  its  two  wings — 
the  old-fashioned  and  uncompromising  portion,  which  is  by  far 
the  larger,  and  the  Reichspartei,  or  "Liberal"  part  of  it — is  well 
enough  known  not  to  require  lengthy  explanation.  In  numbers 
it  remains  far  behind  both  the  Centre  and  Socialist  factions, 
but  by  the  unreformed  elective  system  still  in  vogue  in  Prussia 
and  by  adhering  to  the  districting  plan  of  thirty-one  years  ago 
as  far  as  the  elections  for  the  empire  are  concerned,  this  party 
sends  about  twice  as  many  delegates  into  the  German  legislatures 
as  it  is  by  rights  entitled  to.  It  thus  presents  the  second  largest 
body  of  delegates  in  the  Reichstag,  and  on  nine  questions  out  of 
every  ten  it  is  a  unit.  Its  membership  is  drawn,  with  few  excep- 
tions, from  the  wealthiest  and  privileged  classes,  numbering  in 
its  ranks  high  government  officials,  owners  of  vast  estates,  etc., 
and  through  this  fact  and  their  wide  and  intimate  personal  and 
family  connections  the  Conservatives  exert  an  influence  both 


70  GERMANY 

upon  the  government  and  upon  legislation  which  is  out  of  all 
reasonable  proportions.  This  influence  is  used  largely  in  further- 
ing their  class  interests,  and  in  the  main  is  a  most  unfortunate 
one  upon  the  political  life  of  the  nation.  By  confederating  with 
the  Centre,  and  according  to  circumstances  with  a  part  of  the 
National  Liberal  faction,  they  are  enabled  to  push  through  most 
bills  which  have  been  stamped  with  their  approval.  They  may 
be  called  the  most  reliable  government  support,  at  least  on  all 
legislation  which  does  not  militate  against  their  class  interests. 

The  enormous  decrease  of  political  Liberalism  in  Germany, 
which  has  been  one  of  the  most  marked  symptoms  of  the  past 
decade,  is  that  feature  in  the  political  life  of  the  young  empire 
which  fills  the  friend  of  Germany  with  deepest  sorrow  and  with 
direst  forebodings.  During  the  sixties,  the  Liberals  (then  called 
the  Forts chrittspartei,  or  Progressive  party)  were  the  dominant 
party  in  Prussia,  and  it  was  then  that  Prussia  was  recognized 
all  over  the  German-speaking  lands  as  the  champion  of  political 
progress.  This  moral  factor  had  as  much  to  do  as  all  others 
together  in  giving  Prussia  her  hegemony,  and  in  bringing  about 
the  formation  of  the  North  German  Confederation,  and  next  the 
adhesion  of  the  Southern  States  to  the  empire.  It  was  during 
that  period  that  King  William  I  of  Prussia,  afterwards  the  first 
Emperor,  seriously  feared  meeting  the  same  fate  as  Charles  I 
of  England,  as  Bismarck  has  told  the  world  since,  because  of 
the  long  conflict  between  him  and  his  Cabinet  on  one  side, 
and  the  Liberal  majority  in  the  Diet  on  the  other.  From  its 
proud  eminence  the  Liberal  party  in  Germany  has  sunk  to  a 
pitiful  depth.  Liberalism,  as  the  word  was  formerly  understood 
in  Germany,  is  almost  dead  there.  And  the  Reichstag  bears 
eloquent  testimony  to  this  fact. 

The  National  Liberal  party,  which  after  the  foundation  of  the 
Empire  represented  for  a  score  of  years  the  most  important  and 
energetic  impulses  of  the  nation,  and  contributed  more  than  any 
other  to  its  national  unity  and  greatness,  has  been  steadily  de- 
clining. It  now  sends  but  forty-nine  members  and  polls  about 
850,000  votes.  It  has,  besides,  ceased  to  be  "  Liberal"  in  all  but 
name.  From  patriotic  it  has  become  "jingo.  "  In  its  ranks  to-day 
are  found  the  wildest  ranters  for  Pan-Germanism,  men  like 
Doctor  Hasse  and  Doctor  Lehr.  Their  platform  has  been  tinkered 


POLITICAL  LIFE  71 

out  of  all  recognition,  and  more  and  more  of  their  old-time  con- 
stituencies have  repudiated  their  candidates.  The  other  three 
Liberal  sections,  the  old  Progressive  party,  its  offshoot,  the 
Liberal  Association,  and  the  People's  party,  have  come  down 
to  862,000  votes  combined.  All  the  Liberals  elected  either  to 
the  Reichstag  or  the  Prussian  Diet  are  numerically  too  weak  to 
undertake  a  policy  of  their  own,  and  they  lack  cohesion  and  a 
community  of  political  aims  and  interests.  Thus,  they  shift 
about  and  are  barely  able,  now  and  then,  to  defeat  a  specially 
obnoxious  measure  by  filibustering  tactics.  Under  such  dis- 
piriting influences,  they  have  become  mere  obstructionists. 
This  decrease  of  Liberalism  has  occurred  since  jingoism  was  in- 
jected into  German  politics,  and  since  a  blatant  and  ill-directed 
greed  for  colonies  took  hold  of  a  large  part  of  the  nation.  Of 
course,  it  is  too  early  to  surmise  what,  if  anything,  will  come  of 
those  colonial  dreams. 

An  anachronism  as  pronounced  in  its  way  as  the  Ultramontane 
party  (or  Centre)  is  the  anti-Semite  faction.  It  originated  a 
score  of  years  ago  in  the  so-called  Berlin  Movement,  and  ac- 
quired at  that  time  a  good  deal  of  force  and  a  wide  spread 
throughout  the  empire.  At  a  particular  point  in  its  develop- 
ment this  peculiar  political  creed  could  boast  of  a  voting  strength 
running  close  up  to  a  million,  and  that  portion  of  the  press  sub- 
servient to  its  interests  was  both  numerous  and  violent. 

Its  three  shining  lights  for  a  time  were  Hermann  Ahlwardt, 
rector  of  a  college ;  Adolf  Stoecker,  court  and  cathedral  preacher 
under  the  old  Emperor;  and  Liebermann  von  Sonnenberg,  a  well- 
known  writer.  All  three  of  them  were  forcible  speakers,  and 
their  methods  of  appealing  to  the  popular  prejudice  against  the 
Jews  by  cunningly  devised  arguments  and  wholesale  abuse,  and 
by  demanding  the  social,  political  and  business  ostracism  of  this 
part  of  the  population,  proved  eminently  successful  for  years. 
They  flooded  the  country  with  anti-Semitic  pamphlets  and  cir- 
culars, explaining  the  growing  wealth  of  the  Jews  in  Germany 
by  attributing  to  them  greater  unscrupulousness  and  clannish- 
ness,  and  declaiming  against  the  ascendancy  of  Jewish  capital; 
and  their  newspaper  organs,  above  all  the  Berlin  Staatsb'urger- 
Zeitung,  systematically  inflamed  public  opinion  to  a  dangerous 
pitch.  They  adroitly  manipulated  as  campaign  capital  the  sen- 


72  GERMANY 

sational  "Passover  murder  case"  on  the  lower  Rhine,  where  an 
orthodox  Jewish  butcher  named  Buschoff  was  charged  with  the 
slaughter  of  a  little  Christian  girl  for  ritual  purposes.  In  spite 
of  the  utmost  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  anti-Semites,  however, 
and  despite  the  unsafe  state  of  public  opinion  at  the  time  of 
the  trial,  the  court  failed  to  convict  Buschoff,  and  the  evidence, 
such  as  it  was,  showed  a  deplorably  low  mental  condition  and 
the  darkest  kind  of  superstition  pervading  large  classes  of  the 
German  people.  After  definitely  failing  in  this  and  several 
other  and  similar  cases,  trumped  up  for  the  express  purpose  of 
intensifying  ancient  prejudices,  the  anti-Semites  began  to  decline 
as  a  political  factor,  though  they  have  every  now  and  then  re- 
newed their  demands  upon  the  imperial  and  the  several  State 
legislatures  to  frame  special  laws  against  the  Jews.  One  of 
their  standing  demands  is  to  enforce  a  government  translation 
of  the  Talmud  and  of  several  rabbinical  writings,  as  they  claim 
that  such  translation  would  show  an  orthodox  Jewish  code  of 
morals  wholly  at  variance  with  the  Christian  one  and  with  the 
best  interests  of  the  nation.  This  demand,  however,  as  sundry 
other  ones,  have  steadily  been  declined  by  both  governments 
and  legislatures. 

Thus,  anti-Semitism  in  Germany  is  no  longer  a  strong  factor 
in  politics.  Nevertheless,  it  makes  itself  greatly  felt.  The 
dozen  anti-Semite  members  in  the  Reichstag,  led  mostly  by 
Liebermann  von  Sonnenberg,  a  flamboyant  but  effective  orator, 
comprise  by  no  means  anti- Jewish  sentiment  in  that  body  or 
in  the  various  State  legislatures.  It  is  not  long  ago  that  a  well- 
known  Conservative  leader  in  the  Reichstag  could  say,  "To-day 
every  decent  man  is  more  or  less  an  anti-Semite,"  and  earn 
vociferous  applause  by  this  remarkable  statement. 

The  last  census  gave  Germany  567,884  Israelites — i.  e.,  mem- 
bers of  the  Mosaic  faith.  That  means  but  one  per  cent,  of  the 
total  population.  But  in  certain  parts  of  the  empire  the  Jews 
are,  nevertheless,  a  great  power.  This  is  the  case  in  the  prov- 
inces of  Silesia  and  Posen,  in  Hesse-Nassau  and  the  Rhine  prov- 
ince, but  particularly  in  Berlin,  which  has  a  Jewish  population 
of  over  100,000.  In  Berlin  the  Jews  occupy  indeed  an  eminent 
place  in  public  and  business  life,  more  especially  as  financiers 
and  manufacturers,  brokers  and  agents,  writers,  journalists, 


POLITICAL  LIFE  73 

actors,  artists,  etc.,  and  that  in  a  measure  explains  the  strength 
of  the  anti- Jewish  sentiment  in  that  city.  But  the  curious 
fact  remains  that  the  movement  is  also  strong  in  parts  of 
Germany  where  the  Jewish  admixture  in  the  population  is 
numerically  very  slight,  as  in  Saxony  (9,000  out  of  4,000,000), 
Mecklenburg  (489  out  of  600,000),  and  elsewhere. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  into  the  question  whether  Jewish 
influence  upon  the  recent  development  of  Germany  has  been 
in  all  respects  wholesome  and  uplifting,  but  it  can  be  truthfully 
said  that  the  Jewish  part  of  the  population  there  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  Germany's  welfare,  and  that  without  it  the  empire 
would  not  have  attained  so  quickly,  if  at  all,  that  eminence  in 
trade  and  industry  which  is  the  just  pride  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole. 

While,  however,  anti-Semitism  as  a  political  entity  is  quite 
evidently  on  the  wane  in  Germany,  the  tide  of  anti-Semite 
sentiment  is  still  running  fast  and  furious. 

The  Prussian  Diet  is  the  legislative  body  next  in  importance 
in  Germany.  It  antedates  the  Reichstag  by  a  score  of  years,  as 
it  was  the  outgrowth  of  the  Prussian  revolution  of  1848,  which 
was  fought  for  a  constitution  and  for  legislative  representation 
of  the  people.  It  is  in  many  of  its  features  patterned  after  the 
English  parliament,  and  has  a  "Herrenhaus,"  or  house  of  lords, 
and  a  "Abgeordnetenhaus,"  or  house  of  delegates.  The  upper 
house  is  of  minor  importance,  and  its  members  are  either  heredi- 
tary, like  the  princes  of  the  royal  family,  the  heads  of  the  wealth- 
ier and  more  ancient  noble  families,  or  are  appointed  by  the 
Kaiser,  as  king  of  Prussia,  such  as  rectors  of  universities,  chief 
mayors  of  leading  cities,  and  high  court  and  royal  household 
officials.  The  lower  branch,  like  the  House  of  Commons,  is 
the  more  important,  and  nearly  all  distinctively  Prussian 
laws  of  moment  originate  there.  The  433  delegates  to  this 
body  are  elected  by  the  nation,  and  receive  a  stipend  of  15  marks 
per  diem,  or  about  $3.75,  also  mileage,  and  some  other  emolu- 
ments. But  the  suffrage  on  which  this  house  is  elected  is  not 
general,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Reichstag,  but  is  plutocratic  pure 
and  simple.  It  was  Bismarck  who  stigmatized  this  antiquated 
Prussian  election  law  as  "the  worst  in  existence."  The  law 
works  in  this  way:  From  the  total  number  of  adult  citizens  in 


74  GERMANY 

each  of  the  433  election  districts  are  eliminated  all  those  who  do 
not  pay  a  certain  minimum  of  direct  taxes.  This  removes 
nearly  the  whole  labouring  population  and  a  considerable  frac- 
tion of  the  poorer  middle  classes.  The  remainder  is  divided  into 
three  classes  of  electors — those  paying  the  highest  amount  of 
taxes  in  each  election  district,  those  paying  the  next  highest 
amount,  and  those  paying  the  lowest.  Each  class,  no  matter 
how  small  the  number  of  those  belonging  to  it,  counts  as  an  even 
third  in  making  up  the  electoral  vote,  so  that,  for  instance, 
three  electors  in  the  first  class  count  for  as  much  as  the  225  of 
the  second  class,  or  the  14,800  electors  of  the  third.  As  if  this, 
however,  were  not  sufficiently  absurd,  no  general  figures  are 
given  as  to  what  shall  constitute  inclusion  in  each  class,  so  that 
in  one  district,  where  wealthy  taxpayers  abound,  a  tax  receipt 
showing  10,000  marks  in  taxes  paid  as  a  minimum  will  be  neces- 
sary to  secure  the  privilege  of  voting  with  the  first  class,  while 
in  the  adjoining  district,  where  not  a  single  wealthy  man  re- 
sides, 500  marks  paid  in  taxes  will  be  enough  to  enjoy  that  boon. 
Under  the  operation  of  this  ridiculous  law  it  has  often  happened 
that  while  a  wealthy  master  tailor  has  voted  in  the  first  class,  his 
customer,  a  minister  of  state  (though  poor),  has  had  to  vote  in 
the  third  class,  along  with  his  own  coachman  and  valet.  One 
man  in  the  first  class  of  electors  (the  only  really  wealthy  man  in 
the  town)  and  three  in  the  second  have  together  outvoted  the 
3,000  or  4,000  electors  of  the  third  class  in  a  town  of  medium 
size.  And  so  on  in  all  sorts  and  degrees  of  unreason. 

Against  this  travesty  on  election  based  on  the  franchise,  the 
entire  Liberal  party  of  Prussia  has  been  arrayed  for  two  genera- 
tions, but  all  their  efforts  have  not  availed  in  the  slightest.  The 
Prussian  government  and  the  present  privileged  classes  there 
know  that  under  this  law  they  are  secure  against  political  or 
social  reforms,  and  they  also  know  that  the  Socialists  and  the 
entire  lower  class  cannot  enter  the  Diet  and  "disturb  the  peace" 
there,  and  so  they  keep  this  law. 

It  is  under  these  circumstances  not  surprising  that  the  lower 
house  of  the  Diet  is  made  up  of  199  Conservatives  and  100  mem- 
bers of  the  Centre,  while  the  impotent  minority  of  134  is  com- 
posed of  the  various  branches  of  the  Liberal  party,  of  the  Polish 
"protesters,"  etc. 


POLITICAL  LIFE  75 

But  the  Kaiser  and  his  Prussian  cabinet  are  playing  with 
a  double-edged  tool  in  this  matter,  for  the  reactionary  ele- 
ments in  the  Diet  are  there  in  such  a  strong  majority  that  they 
feel  not  the  slightest  hesitation  about  defeating  the  will  of  the 
government,  whenever  that  seems  to  run  counter  to  their  class 
interests,  and  to  frustrate  promptly  any  unwelcome  legislation. 
Thus  it  happened,  for  instance,  that  the  Diet,  at  successive 
sessions,  killed  without  any  compunction  the  all-important 
Midland  Canal  Bills,  although  the  Kaiser  had  personally  pledged 
himself  for  their  passage  and  although  the  government  had 
agreed  to  all  sorts  of  "compensations"  as  a  reward  for  their  ac- 
ceptance by  the  stubborn  Agrarian  majority.  There  was  a  fine 
tinge  of  poetic  justice  in  this. 

Political  life  and  parties  are  a  more  or  less  faithful  copy  of 
their  Prussian  prototype  in  the  other  twenty-five  States  of 
Germany,  but  with  some  modifications.  There  is,  for  instance, 
more  political  freedom  observable  in  South  Germany  to-day, 
although  the  difference  is  certainly  not  very  marked.  The  most 
liberally  governed  State  at  present  is  Wurttemberg,  where 
there  is  a  complete  absence  of  the  "Younker"  element,  and 
where  lese  majeste  trials  are  unknown.  Bavaria,  too,  is  rather 
democratic,  and  her  legislative  bodies  often  indulge  in  an  amount 
of  plain  speaking  which  would  not  be  tolerated  for  a  moment  in 
either  the  Reichstag  or  the  Prussian  Diet.  Baden,  however, 
has  been  Prussianized,  in  this  respect  as  in  others.  And  the  day 
is  gone  when  South  Germany,  either  in  its  compact  entity  or  in 
its  individual  parts,  could  determine,  or  even  measurably  in- 
fluence, the  political  destinies  of  the  nation.  These  States  and 
their  rulers  are  manipulated  so  cleverly  by  the  Kaiser  and  his 
Chancellor  that,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  they  are  made  to 
do  Prussia's  bidding  on  all  important  matters  of  legislation. 
This,  in  fact,  is  the  logical  trend  of  events,  the  unpalatable  price 
the  smaller  powers  in  Germany  have  to  pay  for  the  great  boon  of 
national  unity 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    SOCIALIST   MOVEMENT 

"WE  will  make  short  work  of  the  Socialist  movement!" 
This,  as  Prince  Bismarck  related  one  day  to  a  group  of  friends 
in  Friedrichsruh,  after  his  retirement,  is  what  the  young  Kaiser 
said  to  him  a  fortnight  after  his  accession  to  the  throne.  "  Leave 
that  to  me,"  he  continued;  "I  shall  win  them  over  to  my  side 
inside  a  year." 

Bismarck  smiled  his  enigmatic  smile,  and  ventured  to  point 
out  some  of  the  great  difficulties  that  seemed  to  stand  in  the 
way  of  such  an  easy  and  simple  solution.  But  the  Kaiser  knew 
better,  and  mapped  out  a  whole  programme  to  his  own  satis- 
faction. 

The  world  knows  how  egregiously  he  failed.  Fourteen  years 
have  passed  since  then,  and  the  Socialist  party  has  grown  to 
more  than  double  the  strength  it  mustered  then.  To  judge  by  its 
voting  strength,  it  represents  to-day  one-fourth  of  the  German 
people,  but  even  that  high  estimate  is  probably  below  the  actual 
truth.  Whoever  lives  in  Germany  cannot  help  mingling  daily, 
almost  hourly,  knowingly  or  unknowingly,  with  Socialists.  The 
valet  who  gives  you  admission  to  his  master's  drawing-room 
may  be  a  Socialist.  In  the  ante-chamber  of  Count  Buelow,  the 
Imperial  Chancellor,  you  are  likely  to  meet  him.  In  every 
government  department  Socialists  are  employed  by  the  score. 
Nay,  the  Kaiser  himself,  do  what  he  will,  has  Socialists  at  his 
court  and  in  his  immediate  entourage.  Only  thus  is  the 
enormous  influence  of  that  party,  its  resources  and  ramifica- 
tions that  extend  everywhere  within  the  Empire,  at  all 
explained. 

As  the  Mayor  of  Kolberg,  in  a  controversy  with  the  govern- 
ment district  president  about  the  renting  of  a  public  hall  to  a 
body  of  Socialists  once  expressed  it,  "He  who  does  not  want  to 
sit  where  Socialists  have  sat,  will  nowadays  be  somewhat  em- 

76 


THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  77 

barrassed  to  find  a  seat  anywhere  in  Germany;  at  least,  he  cannot 
any  longer  travel  in  railway  carriages.  What  we  eat  and  drink 
is  for  the  most  part  made  by  Socialists.  Our  clothes  have  been 
manufactured  by  Socialists.  You  cannot  live  in  a  new  house 
in  the  building  of  which  Socialists  have  not  been  engaged.  In 
short,  to  avoid  Socialists  or  to  stigmatize  them  as  a  class  outside 
of  the  pale  of  respectable  society  is  an  absolutely  futile  task. 
Only  by  acknowledging  them  as  a  public  factor  on  an  equality 
with  all  other  public  factors  can  the  social  peace  be  furthered." 

Indeed,  the  Mayor  of  Kolberg  did  not  overstate  the  facts. 
Strange  as  it  seems  at  first  blush  that  at  least  one  in  every  four 
men  one  meets  in  Germany  belongs  to  a  political  organization 
which  has  written  on  its  banners  the  obliteration  of  the  present 
state  of  government,  the  abolition  of  monarchy,  and  the  sub- 
stitution of  the  immense  army  by  a  much  vaster  militia  body, 
a  party  that  looks  upon  the  present  State  as  its  mortal  enemy — 
it  is  only  too  true.  It  is  the  same  party  which  the  Kaiser, 
thoroughly  recovered  from  the  dream  of  his  first  year  as  a  ruler, 
characterized,  at  the  opening  of  a  new  Reichstag  session,  as  a 
"horde  of  men  unworthy  to  bear  the  name  of  Germans";  the 
same  party — and  the  only  political  party  in  Germany,  be  it 
said, — which  by  its  masterly  generalship,  its  cohesion,  and  in 
many  cases  by  the  justice  of  its  cause,  has  defeated  the  Kaiser 
whenever  he  crossed  swords  with  it.  His  thrice-repeated  attempt 
to  force  through  the  Reichstag  and  the  Prussian  Diet  special 
legislation  putting  the  Socialists  outside  the  pale  of  the  Constitu- 
tion and  of  the  common  law  of  the  Empire,  miscarried  utterly. 
The  whole  power  of  a  splendidly  drilled  bureaucracy  has  been 
employed  in  vain  against  it.  Thousands  of  Socialists  have  been 
sent  to  the  hulks  for  uttering  critical  or  abusive  words  regarding 
the  Kaiser  or  monarchy,  and  the  editors  of  Socialist  papers  have 
been  sent  to  jail  by  hundreds — and  all  the  effect  produced  was 
the  election  to  the  National  Parliament  of  new  Socialist  dele- 
gates and  the  increased  circulation  of  the  Socialist  press. 

While  no  "exemption  laws"  could  be  passed  against  the 
Socialist  party,  the  existing  laws  have  been  strained  to  their 
utmost  by  willing  judges,  and  the  enormous  powers  of  an  ad- 
ministration which  practically  is  above  the  law  has  been  steadily 
and  pitilessly  exerted  against  its  followers.  Socialists  for  many 


78  GERMANY 

years  have  been  virtually  denied  nearly  all  the  benefits  which 
the  constitution  confers  on  every  subject — liberty  of  speech, 
liberty  of  the  press,  liberty  of  worship,  and  liberty  of  associating 
for  political,  social  or  economic  purposes.  This  has,  of  course, 
not  been  rigidly  done  in  every  part  of  the  empire.  In  the  large 
cities,  especially,  this  roughshod  overriding  of  the  fundamental 
law  of  the  empire  could  not,  in  many  cases,  be  even  attempted, 
for  fear  of  uprisings,  and  still  more  for  fear  of  driving  the  Liberal 
and  well-to-do  portion  of  the  citizens  into  the  Socialist  camp  as 
well.  But  in  the  rural  districts  and  in  the  smaller  towns,  above 
all  in  the  less  enlightened  provinces  of  Prussia,  in  the  North  and 
East,  such  high-handed  measures  to  stamp  out  Socialism  have 
been  much  in  vogue,  and  have  found  the  enthusiastic  approval 
of  the  Kaiser.  But  all  to  no  purpose.  The  ranks  of  the  party 
have  become  more  serried  than  ever,  and  persecution  of  creed 
and  thought  has  had  in  this  instance,  as  it  nearly  always  does, 
but  a  contrary  effect. 

Were  it  not  for  the  comparative  freedom  of  speech  which 
still  obtains  in  the  Reichstag,  and  for  the  63  Socialist  delegates 
in  it,  there  is  small  doubt  that  the  Socialist  masses  would  be 
treated  even  much  more  harshly  than  is  the  case.  But  the 
solid  Socialist  phalanx  in  that  body  calls  the  worst  offenders 
in  this  line  to  account.  It  is  in  the  army  that  the  Socialist  fares 
worst.  Of  course,  nobody  can  blame  the  Emperor  for  insisting 
on  the  stern  exclusion  of  anything  like  a  Socialist  propaganda 
within  the  army,  and  on  severe  punishment  for  any  attempts  in 
that  direction.  The  possession  of  Socialist  literature  in  any 
shape — books,  pamphlets,  newspapers,  etc. — and  the  mere 
reading  of  it,  is  visited  by  condign  retribution.  Utterances  of  a 
Socialistic  nature,  too,  meet  with  strict  disciplining,  and  often 
with  long  jail  sentences.  But  many  cases  have  been  brought  to 
public  notice  where  the  culprit,  on  being  asked  by  his  superior 
officers,  merely  admitted  his  Socialist  belief,  and  was  thereupon 
cruelly  punished.  Every  Prussian  minister  of  war  makes  a 
point  of  being  severer  in  this  respect  than  his  predecessor  has 
been.  This  abuse  of  military  authority,  as  well  as  similar  cases 
within  the  province  of  civil  administration,  finds  castigation  on 
the  part  of  the  Socialist  spokesmen  in  the  Reichstag  and  in  the 
legislatures  of  the  different  German  States,  though  this  cannot 


79 

prevent  recurrence,  and,  besides,  leads  to  worse  persecution  of 
the  victims,  if  the  latter  can  at  all  be  traced  by  the  authorities. 
Still,  on  the  whole,  this  parliamentary  uplifting  of  the  veil  that 
hides  these  outrages  committed  from  a  mistaken  sense  of  zeal, 
has  a  salutary  effect  in  checking  persecution  both  in  volume  and 
in  degree. 

Of  course,  the  Kaiser  as  well  as  the  whole  German  government 
and  the  different  sovereign  rulers  of  the  German  states,  know 
perfectly  well  that  Socialism,  as  it  exists  to-day  in  Germany, 
has  practically  been  robbed  of  its  revolutionary  sting.  Evolu- 
tion in  German  Socialism,  not  so  much  in  its  nominal  creed  as  in 
its  practical  aims  and  in  the  hold  it  has  acquired  on  the  masses, 
has  been  more  and  more  away  from  its  original  sources.  After 
the  savage  suppression  laws  against  Socialism  which  Bismarck 
framed,  and  which  were  in  force  for  a  number  of  years,  failed 
to  be  renewed  by  the  Reichstag  at  their  expiration,  the  Socialist 
party,  it  is  quite  true,  gained  quickly  and  enormously  in 
numbers.  In  1878-79,  owing  to  these  repressive  measures,  the 
Socialist  vote  dropped  to  312,000  as  against  their  493,000  votes 
in  1877.  But  from  that  time  until  the  last  general  election,  that 
of  1898,  the  Socialist  vote  rose  rapidly  and  steadily,  and  in  the 
latter  year  it  attained  to  2,107,000,  while  the  vote  of  all  the  other 
parties  gradually  went  down,  and  to-day  some  of  these  parties 
poll  barely  one-fourth  of  their  former  strength.  The  parties 
suffering  the  most  were  the  Liberal,  in  its  various  shades  of 
opinion,  with  the  National  Liberal  and  the  Centre  following. 
All  the  Liberal  factions  together  to-day  do  not  poll  as  many 
votes  as  the  Socialists  alone,  showing  plainly  that  whole  classes 
of  the  population,  formerly  trusting  to  a  large  Liberal  party 
for  the  carrying  out  of  a  programme  embodying  a  greater  meas- 
ure of  political  liberty,  had  despaired  of  that  hope,  and  in  that 
despair  turned  to  the  most  radical  reform  party  of  all  as  a  last 
resort,  and  as  the  only  available  means  of  uttering  a  protest 
against  the  present  rdgime.  The  constituency  of  the  remnant 
of  the  once  powerful  Liberal  party  has  also  greatly  changed 
during  this  process.  It  used  to  comprise  nearly  the  whole  middle 
class  in  Germany — this  was  preeminently  the  case  before,  under 
Bismarck's  warfare  against  the  Catholic  Church,  the  Ultramon- 
tane Centre  was  formed — i.  e.,  the  best  and  most  progressive 


80  GERMANY 

part  of  the  nation.  It  was  this  part,  in  fact,  which  made  Ger- 
many what  it  is  to-day.  But  now,  after  the  Centre  has  become 
the  largest  party  in  parliamentary  representation  (but  by  no 
means  in  the  number  of  votes  polled) ,  owing  to  the  most  flagrant 
and  wholesale  case  of  gerrymandering  on  record  in  the  political, 
history  of  any  nation,  and  after  the  enormous  accessions  to  the 
Socialist  party  from  the  Liberal  ranks,  the  Liberal  factions 
represent  in  the  main  the  plutocratic  interests  of  Germany,  the 
large  banking,  shipping,  and  industrial  classes  and  their  millions. 
In  that  capacity  they  still  wield,  owing  to  the  great  wealth 
represented,  a  certain,  mainly  negative,  influence  on  legislation. 
But  their  hold  on  the  masses  is  entirely  gone.  One  by  one  the 
election  districts  held  for  generations  by  the  Liberals  have  sur- 
rendered to  triumphant  Socialism.  The  industrial  and  manu- 
facturing centres,  such  as  the  whole  Rhenish  and  Westphalian 
provinces,  and  nearly  all  the  large  cities  with  their  rapidly 
growing  population  of  "hands"  employed  in  factories,  textiles, 
the  iron  and  steel  industries,  etc., have  become  strongly  Socialistic. 
Berlin  and  its  suburbs,  comprising  a  population  of  two  and  a 
half  millions,  has  an  enormous  Socialist  majority.  So  has 
Hamburg,  Breslau,  Dresden,  Leipzig,  Chemnitz,  Altona,  Stettin, 
Konigsberg,  Dantzic,  Nuremberg,  and  nearly  all  other  large 
centres.  The  election  districts  of  Germany  are  still  the  same 
they  were  in  1871,  although  since  that  time  they  have  changed 
entirely  in  their  population,  the  urban  ones  having  in  many 
cases  doubled,  trebled,  and  even  quadrupled  in  size,  while  the 
rural  ones  have  actually  diminished.  All  attempts  to  effect  a 
redistricting,  however,  have  been  stubbornly  resisted  by  the 
government  as  well  as  by  the  dominant  parties,  the  Conservative 
factions  and  the  Centre,  even  by  the  National  Liberals,  since 
such  redistricting  would  at  once  increase  the  Socialist  represen- 
tation by  at  least  one  hundred  per  cent.,  and  decrease  the  repre- 
sentation of  nearly  all  other  parties,  but  most  of  all  that  of  the 
Conservatives  and  of  the  Centre. 

Berlin,  for  instance,  would,  with  its  suburbs,  alone  send  17 
Socialists  to  the  Reichstag,  instead  of  7  as  at  present.  There 
would  then  be  about  120  Socialist  delegates  in  the  Reichstag, 
out  of  a  total  of  397,  and  the  Conservatives  would  be 
reduced  to  less  than  50,  against  their  present  91,  while  the 


THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  81 

Centre,  instead  of  107,  as  now,  would  muster  barely  60.  With 
the  more  radical  Liberal  wing,  now  a  pitiful  twoscore,  but  under 
a  redistricting  having  at  least  60  members,  and  a  portion  of 
the  numerous  Independents,  the  Socialists  would  then  be  the 
dominant  legislative  factor  in  imperial  affairs.  It  is  not  aston- 
ishing that  the  government  and  the  parties  now  controlling 
legislation  should  resist  to  the  utmost  such  a  contingency. 
In  fact,  both  government  and  the  more  extreme  factions  in  the 
Reichstag  usually  siding  with  the  government  harbour  the  de- 
sign of  curtailing  the  general  franchise  in  order  to  perpetuate 
their  present  power  before  the  Socialists  have,  even  under  pres- 
ent unfavourable  conditions,  attained  the  control,  a  thing  which 
is  greatly  feared  by  them,  and  which,  judging  by  the  signs  of  the 
times,  there  is  abundant  reason  to  fear.  For  the  bye  elections 
that  have  taken  place  during  the  last  two  years,  to  replace  mem- 
bers who  had  died  or  resigned,  have,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
all  resulted  in  Socialist  victories,  even  in  former  strongholds  of 
other  parties.  The  whole  trend  of  affairs,  in  fact,  seems  to  point 
to  very  large  Socialist  increases  at  the  next  general  elections, 
in  1903.  It  is  probable  that  the  Socialist  gains  will  be  larger 
than  at  any  previous  election. 

These  designs  of  curtailing  the  general  franchise,  either  by 
attaching  to  the  ballot  the  condition  of  a  stipulated  minimum 
of  taxation,  or  by  some  other  discrimination  which  would  dis- 
franchise large  numbers  of  the  lower  classes,  has  thus  far  met 
with  a  determined  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  Reichstag  ma- 
jority, composed  of  the  entire  Left  and  part  of  the  Centre,  and 
there  does  not  seem  to  be  any  chance  to  realize  it  in  the  near 
future.  However,  the  plan  exists,  and  whenever  the  time  should 
come  that  the  government  deems  it  necessary  to  realize  it,  the 
Kaiser  and  his  resourceful  advisers  may  find  the  means,  either 
in  coercing  or  otherwise  influencing  the  Reichstag,  or  by  an  in- 
fringement of  the  Constitution,  to  make  a  concrete  fact  of  it.  It 
would,  indeed,  be  a  matter  of  life  and  death  with  the  govern- 
ment to  prevent  the  Socialists  from  obtaining  control — although 
the  mere  majority  in  the  Reichstag  would  not  yet  give  com- 
plete control,  there  being  the  Bundesrath  as  a  coordinate  and 
equally  powerful  body  to  consider,  while  the  army  would  still 
remain,  as  now,  under  the  sole  command  of  the  Kaiser — and 


8a  GERMANY 

the  Kaiser  at  least   is  not  the  man  to  give  up  the  nght  until  the 
last  ditch. 

However,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  even  if  the  Socialists 
should  obtain  control  of  imperial  affairs  in  the  Reichstag,  they 
would  make  an  attempt  to  carry  their  party  programme  as  it  was 
originally  framed  by  their  earlier  leaders,  a  programme  in  its 
main  features  corresponding  with  the  doctrines  of  Marx  and 
Engels,  or  even  of  Liebknecht,  one  of  their  later  prophets. 

Liebknecht,  who  had  suffered  much  for  the  faith,  and  who 
was  put  in  jail  for  a  long  term  for  "implied  lesemajeste  "  (as  the 
judge  who  convicted  him  of  this  offense,  not  found  in  the  sta- 
tutes, phrased  it)  only  a  short  while  before  death  finally  released 
him  from  all  Prussian  jurisdiction,  had  died  happy  in  the  firm 
belief  that  the  great  day  of  reckoning  was  close  at  hand.  He, 
like  Bebel  and  Singer,  had  been  an  honest  fanatic  and  an  un- 
daunted champion  of  Socialism  in  its  earlier  form,  involving 
a  bloody  uprising  of  the  lower  against  the  upper  classes  and 
against  the  present  form  of  government,  and  a  complete  reorgan- 
ization of  society  on  the  lines  of  State  control  of  all  the  means  of 
production  and  consumption.  This  Utopian  dream  formed,  of 
course,  an  integral  and  vital  part  of  orthodox  Socialism  as  taught 
until  a  decade  ago,  and  though  successive  Socialist  party  con- 
ventions had  gradually  weakened  and  modified  this  original 
platform,  its  main  features,  smoothed  over  somewhat,  were 
still  contained  in  the  party  programme  adopted  at  the  great 
Erfurt  convention,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighties. 

Since  then,  however,  a  strong  counter-current  has  set  in 
within  German  Socialism.  There  has  been  a  steady  and  in- 
creasing inclination  to  lop  off  from  the  parent  tree  these  revo- 
lutionary branches,  and  to  confine  the  party,  in  creed  as  well  as 
in  practical  aims,  to  a  set  of  reforms  which,  radical  as  they  are 
and  diametrically  opposed  to  the  class  interests  of  the  dominat- 
ing factors  in  Germany,  could  nevertheless  be  carried  out  on 
peaceable  lines,  and  could  easily  find  a  place  within  the  present 
order  of  society.  In  its  main  features  this  revised  programme, 
though  out  of  deference  to  the  feelings  of  their  old-time  leaders 
it  has  not  been  adopted  in  so  many  words,  not  even  at  the  last 
party  convention,  is  that  of  a  radical  reform  and  labor  party. 
It  includes  State  control  of  all  means  of  communication  and  of 


THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  83 

all  factories,  mines,  shipyards,  etc.,  with  the  voice  of  owner  and 
toiler  coordinated,  and  provides  for  a  minimum  of  wages  and 
a  maximum  of  hours  of  labor,  etc.,  etc.  But  it  does  away  with 
any  violent  upheaval,  with  forcible  dispossession,  and  with  nearly 
every  paragraph  in  the  earlier  creed  to  which  other  political 
parties,  no  matter  how  friendly  disposed  otherwise  to  the 
just  demands  of  labor,  have  had  all  along  strong  objections. 
And  though,  as  stated  above,  this  new  programme  has  net 
so  far  been  formally  adopted  by  the  Socialists  of  Germany  as  a 
party,  largely  for  sentimental  reasons,  there  is,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  overwhelming  part  of  their 
armies  have  really  accepted  it  as  their  true  aim  and  wish. 
This  has  become  plainer  year  after  year,  and  the  older  and  irre- 
concilable elements  of  the  party,  though  still  in  a  good  many 
ways  representing  the  Socialist  masses  in  public,  have  been 
pushed  to  the  wall  and  gradually  reduced  to  a  small  minority. 

For  a  time  it  looked,  indeed,  as  if  there  would  be  a  formal 
split  in  the  whole  party,  with  the  extreme  wing  forming  the 
nucleus  of  a  new  one,  and  a  year  ago  Singer,  in  a  public  speech 
in  Munich,  threatened  as  much.  But  at  present  it  seems  as  if 
this  smaller  wing  of  dyed-in-the-wool  Socialists  of  the  earlier 
Marx  school  had  abandoned  that  idea,  and  intended  to  remain 
in  the  party,  where  their  counsel  and  voice  will  be  in  many 
ways  invaluable.  As  tacticians  and  campaigners  and  as  po- 
litical organizers  of  an  opposition  party,  they  are,  and  will  prob- 
ably continue  to  be,  of  immense  service  to  the  party  and  to  its 
younger  and  less  experienced  leaders,  and  as  Socialist  spokes- 
men in  the  Reichstag  and  elsewhere  their  influence  could  hardly 
be  missed.  Outside  of  these  practical  considerations,  of  course, 
the  fact  that  these  old-time  leaders  of  Socialism  in  Germany 
have  been  the  martyrs  of  the  party  on  innumerable  occasions, 
and  have  spent  half  their  lives  in  jail  for  the  cause  of  the  working 
man,  makes  the  moral  bonds  that  unite  the  Socialist  masses 
to  them  much  stronger. 

The  great  change  that  has  been  wrought  within  the  aims  and 
convictions  of  the  Socialist  masses  in  Germany  has  been  due  to 
two  great  causes.  The  first  of  them  is  the  altered  character  of 
the  rank  and  file.  It  was  pointed  out  before  that  immense 
accessions  have  come  to  the  Socialist  party  during  the  past  ten 


84  GERMANY 

years  from  the  various  factions  of  the  whilom  great  Liberal 
party  in  Germany,  and  also  from  the  Centre,  especially  in  the 
industrial  districts  of  the  Catholic  Rhine  and  Westphalian 
provinces  and  in  some  parts  of  the  Polish-speaking  districts  of 
Silesia.  These  recruits,  becoming  more  and  more  numerous, 
had  for  the  most  part  little  faith  in  the  sanguinary  part  of  the 
old  Socialist  programme,  but  they  firmly  believed  in  the  re- 
forms advocated  by  the  party.  Their  mere  numerical  weight, 
however,  great  as  it  was,  would  not  have  sufficed  to  turn  the 
scale.  But  there  was  much  brain  power  used  in  the  same  di- 
rection, and  the  head  and  front  of  this  intellectual  warfare 
waged  against  the  earlier  dogmas  of  Socialism  was  Bernstein, 
for  twenty  years  an  exile  from  Germany —  like  so  many  other  of 
the  ablest  Socialists  driven  out  by  Bismarck  under  his  repression 
laws.  He  had  been,  in  fact,  a  fugitive  from  German  justice, 
and  a  long  term  of  captivity  was  awaiting  him  if  he  had  been 
found,  any  time  these  score  of  years,  on  German  soil.  The 
"Steckbrief"  (a  demand  upon  all  German  authorities  to  arrest 
him  wherever  found)  had  been  regularly  renewed  by  publication 
in  the  Reichsanzeiger  to  prevent  its  losing  legal  effect.  Mean- 
while Bernstein  was  following  his  trade  as  a  writer  on  economic 
questions  in  the  British  metropolis.  The  extensive  experience 
he  thus  acquired  in  an  entirely  new  field  of  labor,  and  the  conse- 
quent widening  of  his  mental  horizon,  produced  due  effect  in  the 
course  of  time.  Bernstein  modified  his  theories  on  Socialism 
more  and  more.  He  has  been  recognized  within  the  Socialist 
party  for  many  years  as  the  intellectual  successor  of  Engels  and 
Marx,  as  the  most  scientific  and  keenest  thinker  on  their  side. 
This  opinion  became  so  firmly  grounded  among  the  Socialist 
masses  while  he  was  still  an  exile  that  it  cannot  be  uprooted 
now.  During  the  last  years  of  his  stay  in  England  he  wrote  and 
published  a  series  of  books  and  pamphlets  which  found  a  power- 
ful reflex  in  Germany,  and  which  have  done  more  than  any 
other  single  thing  in  moulding  anew  the  doctrines  on  which 
theoretic  Socialism  is  built.  But  his  main  work  in  this  line  has 
been  done  since  his  return  to  Germany.  For  a  couple  of  years 
ago  his  "Steckbrief"  was  not  renewed  by  the  German  govern- 
ment, which  in  itself  is  a  very  significant  fact,  since  the  omission 
can  hardly  have  been  due  to  an  oversight.  Bernstein  returned 


THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  85 

to  the  party  fold  in  Germany.  Upon  his  return  the  entire 
Socialist  press  sang  pseans  of  joy.  But  a  goodly  part  of  this 
press  has  since  changed  its  tune.  For  Bernstein  issued  in  quick 
succession  a  number  of  pithily  written  and  wholly  convincing 
writings  wherein  he  demolished,  one  after  the  other,  the  strongest 
pillars  upon  which  the  old  Socialist  structure,  as  a  scientific, 
political,  and  economic  system,  rests — the  dogma  of  the  steadily 
advancing  pauperization  of  the  masses;  of  a  social  cataclysm 
being  bound  to  come ;  and  of  the  unearned  increment  in  the 
capitalists'  incomes,  etc.,  etc., — and  there  has  been  nobody 
within  the  Socialists'  ranks  able  to  disprove  his  arguments  and 
conclusions. 

A  great  howling  and  shouting  and  gnashing  of  teeth  set  in 
within  the  Socialist  party,  and  in  a  measure  this  still  continues. 
The  old  irreconcilable  leaders,  foremost  among  them,  of  course, 
Bebel,  Singer,  and  Auer,  began  to  call  for  the  ostracism  of  this 
heretic.  A  campaign  was  opened  against  him,  in  which  nearly 
all  the  old-time  leaders  at  first  joined.  One  of  the  most  in- 
fluential Socialist  papers,  the  Tribuene  of  Erfurt,  clearly  proving 
that  he  had,  seriatim,  denied  and  tried  to  destroy  all  the  essential 
theories  upon  which  Socialism  is  founded,  demanded  his  removal 
from  the  party.  The  central  organ  of  German-speaking 
Socialism,  the  Vorw'drts  in  Berlin,  which  at  first  had  rejoiced 
at  his  return,  now  mentioned  him  with  cool  disapproval.  But 
below  all  this  noise  and  animosity  was  plainly  perceptible  the 
fear  that  Bernstein  had  the  great  mass  of  Socialism  with  him  in 
this  matter,  and  that  if  the  old  leaders  insisted  on  his  forcible 
removal  from  the  party,  it  would  be  they  who  would  be  de- 
feated. There  were  all  sorts  of  indications  of  that.  So,  after 
a  while,  the  open  opposition  against  him  and  his  teachings  died 
down,  and  the  new  situation  created  by  him  is  about  as  briefly 
outlined  above.  The  irredentist  part  of  the  Socialist  army  has 
virtually  subsided,  and  thereby  acknowledged  its  overthrow. 
A  truce,  if  not  indeed  a  peace,  has  been  declared  between  the 
warring  factions,  and  at  the  last  party  convention  the  breach 
has  been  patched  up,  and  a  sort  of  amicable  understanding 
tacitly  established  between  them.  A  short  while  later,  not 
many  months  ago,  Bernstein  was  elected  into  the  Reichstag  by 
one  of  the  most  influential  and  largest  Socialist  constituencies 


86  GERMANY 

in  the  whole  Empire,  and  the  stamp  of  approval  thus  formally 
affixed  to  his  work.  He  is  now  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the 
larger  and  more  enlightened  as  well  as  moderate  wing  of  the 
Socialist  party  in  Germany. 

That  these  new  conditions  are  permanent  and  not  of  an  evan- 
escent character  is  seen  by  every  unbiased  and  observant  poli- 
tician in  Germany.  But  there  are,  on  the  other  hand,  many, 
even  whole  political  parties,  who  do  not  wish  to  see,  and  who, 
by  keeping  up  the  cry  against  the  Socialists,  expect  to  reap 
political  or  personal  advantages.  It  is  an  open  secret,  for  ex- 
ample, that  the  Kaiser,  and  through  him  the  government,  has 
not  dared  to  break  with  the  Conservative  party,  although  often 
sorely  tempted  to  do  so,  because  his  entourage  has  known  how 
to  impress  him  with  at  least  a  suspicion  that  the  Socialist  party 
as  a  whole  is  only  kept  from  rising  in  a  bloody  revolution,  in 
which  his  crown  and  all  the  institutions,  political  and  religious, 
which  he  holds  dear  would  be  at  stake,  by  the  constant  fear  of 
an  army  absolutely  devoted  to  him,  the  Kaiser;  that  to  make 
any  pact  or  compromise  with  the  Socialist  party  would  be  worse 
than  any  humiliation  the  Conservative  party  may  subject  him 
to,  and  that  such  a  thing,  in  fact,  is  out  of  the  question  with 
him. 

The  Kaiser  was  greatly  shocked  when  he  heard,  some  time 
ago,  that  a  monarch  as  proud  as  himself — namely,  Francis  Joseph 
of  Austria,  met  and  conversed  in  friendly  fashion  with  the 
Austrian  Socialist  leader,  Pernerstorffer,  and  that  his  relative, 
Grand  Duke  Ernest  Ludwig  of  Hesse,  did  the  same  with  a 
Hessian  Socialist  leader.  It  is  a  pity  that  the  German  Kaiser 
has  had  his  mind  systematically  poisoned  against  so  many 
millions  of  his  subjects  as  to  reject  all  approach,  even  the  slight- 
est, from  that  quarter.  If  it  were  possible  to  convince  him  of  the 
real  truth,  viz.,  that  the  bulk  of  these  German  Socialists  are 
to  all  practical  intents  and  purposes  good  enough  citizens,  who 
make  the  best  soldiers,  the  best  and  most  intelligent  mechanics 
and  artisans,  the  best  industrial  toilers,  whose  handiwork  has 
enriched  the  empire  and  made  of  it  a  great  industrial  and  ex- 
porting country,  and  that  they  pay  their  taxes  as  regularly  as 
the  rest  of  the  population — that  would  be  a  great  step  forward 
in  freeing  him  from  his  mediaeval  shackles,  from  the  tutelage 


THE    SOCIALIST    MOVEMENT  87 

and  the  almost  exclusive  influence  of  the  reactionary  classes 
in  Germany,  the  "Younker"  party,  the  mortgage-ridden  and 
caste-proud  manorial  lords  of  the  unprogressive  eastern  and 
northern  Prussian  provinces,  and  give  him  a  much  firmer  and 
broader  hold  upon  his  people  than  the  army  with  its  bayonets, 
an  army,  by  the  way,  composed  about  one-third  of  young 
Socialists,  or  sons  of  Socialists,  can  give  him.  Of  course,  one 
cannot  blame  the  Kaiser  for  feeling  offended  that  his  dis- 
tinct advances  during  the  first  year  of  his  reign  were  rejected 
almost  with  scorn  by  the  Socialists,  and  that  he  cannot  have  a 
feeling  of  affection  for  a  party  whose  platform  embodies  an  anti- 
monarchic  plank.  But  neither  can  one  blame  the  Socialists  for 
harbouring  a  strong  dislike  for  a  ruler  who  has  done  his  best  to 
estrange  their  feelings  by  endless  and  unjust  persecution,  and 
by  applying  to  them  the  strongest  terms  of  opprobrium  that 
ever  fell  from  the  lips  of  a  monarch  toward  his  own  subjects. 
Strong  contrasts  of  political  belief  are  noticeable  between  rulers 
and  ruled  in  other  enlightened  countries,  this  country  and 
England  included.  But  nowhere  else  is  there  such  a  systematic 
and  wholesale  attempt  to  put  a  large  part  of  the  nation  virtu- 
ally without  the  pale  of  the  constitutional  and  legal  guarantees 
that  encircle  the  liberties  of  all.  There  is,  indeed,  small  doubt 
that  if  at  this  present  juncture  of  Socialist  development  in 
Germany  the  Kaiser  and  his  government  were  to  abandon 
forever  their  present  policy  of  unconstitutional  repression,  and 
show  unmistakably  their  good  faith  in  this  matter,  a  modus 
vivcndi  could  be  established  with  the  Socialist  party  that  need 
not  be  derogatory  to  imperial  dignity,  and  that  would  suffice 
for  all  practical  purposes  of  politics. 

The  Socialists,  in  fact,  had  given  repeated  proof,  even  before 
the  transition  described  above  had  been  fully  wrought,  that 
they  can  be  had  for  the  asking  in  furthering  or  framing  important 
legislation  not  in  dissonance  with  their  creed.  The  most  striking 
instance  of  this  they  gave  under  the  rdgime  of  Count  Caprivi, 
Bismarck's  successor,  the  only  chancellor  so  far  who  faced  the 
Socialists  without  prejudice.  Without  their  votes  Caprivi's 
system  of  commercial  treaties  could  never  have  been  passed. 
And  yet  it  was  this  which  enabled  Germany  to  start  out  on  that 
brilliant  industrial  and  commercial  career  which  has  been,  for 


88  GERMANY 

a  decade,  the  marvel  of  the  world.  It  was  these  same  com- 
mercial treaties  which  the  Kaiser,  in  conferring  the  order  of  the 
Black  Eagle  and  a  correspondingly  high  rank  upon  Caprivi, 
termed  "a  real  saving  deed."  Much  of  the  work  done  by  the 
Socialists  in  the  various  legislative  bodies  of  Germany,  but  above 
all  in  the  Reichstag,  redounds  to  the  best  interests  of  all  classes 
of  the  Empire,  although,  of  course,  their  main  efforts  are  directed 
towards  benefiting  their  constituents,  the  labouring  classes.  But 
that,  too,  is  to  the  interests  of  the  whole  nation.  Their  work  in 
the  various  committees  of  the  Reichstag — and  they  hold  the 
chairmanship  of  some  of  the  most  important — is  more  pains- 
taking and  conscientious  than  that  of  any  other  party,  and  is 
so  acknowledged.  In  acting  as  a  radical  leaven  in  the  broad 
mass  of  tame  subserviency  which  the  majority  of  the  Reichstag 
presents,  they  consciously  or  unconsciously  accomplish  a  vast 
amount  of  good,  and  prepare  the  way  for  a  more  liberal  general 
policy  in  the  empire,  but  above  all  help  greatly  in  preserving 
at  least  that  modicum  of  freedom  in  speech,  press  and  religious 
worship  which  has  survived  the  fourteen  years  of  quasi  abso- 
lutist government  inaugurated  by  the  present  Kaiser.  With 
them  and  their  influence  permanently  removed  from  the 
Reichstag  it  is  hard  to  conceive  to  what  depths  of  inanity  and 
impotence  that  body  would  have  sunk  by  now. 

It  has  often  been  stated  that  the  German  government  has 
done  more,  and  is  doing  more,  than  any  other  for  the  good  of  the 
toiling  masses,  and  in  proof  of  this  assertion  the  inquirer  is 
pointed  to  the  well-known  so-called  "Social  Legislation."  This 
consists,  as  the  world  knows,  in  the  laws  providing  for  com- 
pulsory insurance,  invalid  and  old-age  pensions,  and  accident 
premiums  paid  the  wage  workers  in  mines,  factories,  industrial 
establishments  of  every  kind,  and,  to  some  extent,  also,  to  those 
in  domestic  service.* 

The  benefits  which  the  labouring  millions  in  the  cities  and 

*The  rural  labouring  population  has  been  omitted  throughout  in  this 
legislation,  owing  to  the  determined  opposition  of  the  Agrarian  party, 
whose  contention  it  is  that  such  an  additional  burden  would  ruin  them. 
No  legal  restriction  whatever  is  placed  on  the  rural  employer;  his  farm 
hands  work  as  long  as  he  makes  them,  which  in  harvest  time  and  during 
the  stigar  beet  "campaign"  means  16  to  18  hours  Child  labour  and 
woman  labour  have  no  boundaries  set,  either  in  the  matter  of  wages  or 
hours.  Death  or  accidents  while  at  field  labour  are  in  nowise  compensated. 


THE    SOCIALIST   MOVEMENT  89 

towns  of  Germany  derive  from  these  laws  are  undeniable, 
although  by  no  means  as  large  as  might  be  supposed.  For  one 
thing — and  that  is  the  main  drawback  to  their  efficiency — the 
collection  and  administration  of  the  funds  out  of  which  these 
moneys  are  subsequently  paid  have  been  made  so  cumbersome 
and  withal  so  needlessly  expensive,  that  a  clear  third  of  all 
the  sums  paid  goes  into  the  pockets  of  the  army  of  small 
bureaucrats  who  are  entrusted  with  this  task,  and  who  are  a 
sad  incumbrance  on  the  actual  toiler  who  is  to  be  benefited. 
Magnificent  palaces  have  been  erected  by  the  government 
out  of  these  moneys  of  the  poor,  in  which  vast  hordes  of  these 
administrative  government  employe's  are  housed.  The  most 
gorgeous  of  these  palaces — for  no  other  name  will  fit — stands  on 
one  of  the  most  aristocratic  avenues  of  Berlin.  The  biting 
sarcasm  of  the  masses  has  dubbed  it  the  "Klebepalast" — i.  e., 
"Pasting  Palace" — in  token  of  the  fact  that  the  millions  required 
to  erect  it  came  from  the  weekly  "pasters"  which  every  employe" 
and  employer  in  the  Empire  has  to  buy  and  affix  every  week 
to  the  pages  of  small  booklets  provided  for  the  purpose.  Nor 
is  this  all.  Much  of  the  money  paid  under  these  laws  both  by 
employer  and  employe"  never  reaches  the  persons  for  whose 
behoof  it  is  ostensibly  intended,  for  there  are  whole  lists  of 
exceptions,  annulments,  etc.,  owing  to  sins  of  commission  and 
omission  on  the  part  of  the  laborer.  Again,  the  old-age  limit 
is  fixed  entirely  too  high.  Sixty  is  an  age  which  not  one  in 
twenty  reaches  in  whole  branches  of  unhealthy  industries,  such 
as  mining,  chemical  specialties,  polishers  and  grinders,  etc.,  etc. 
But  above  all,  the  amounts  finally  paid  the  beneficiary  in  case  of 
complete  disablement  or  old  age  are  entirely  insufficient  to  meet 
the  purposes  for  which  the  law  was  passed.  Twenty-five  to 
thirty  cents  per  diem  is  not  enough,  even  in  the  most  frugal  dis- 
tricts of  Germany,  and  even  with  the  greatest  amount  of  rigid 
economy,  to  subsist  on.  And  in  many  cases  the  allowance  is 
even  smaller  than  that.  The  laborer  himself  has  contributed, 
out  of  his  meager  income,  one-half  of  the  whole  fund  that  has 
accumulated  during  his  lifetime,  and  in  the  end  he  is,  by  prema- 
ture death,  cheated  out  of  the  blessings  held  out  to  him  so  en- 
ticingly for  many  years,  or  else  he  receives  a  mere  pittance  on 
which  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  live  the  brief  space  still  allotted 


9o  GERMANY 

to  him.  These  and  a  number  of  other  drawbacks  to  the  present 
system  not  enumerated  here  have  embittered  the  working 
masses  in  this  respect.  They  feel  that  instead  of  a  real  reform 
they  receive  but  the  semblance  of  one. 

All  these  defects  have  been  pointed  out  many  times  in  the 
Socialist  and  non-Socialist  press  of  Germany,  but  nothing  is 
being  done  or  even  attempted,  and  nothing  seems  likely  to  be 
done  for  many  years  to  come  to  better  matters.  The  sentiment 
among  employers  all  over  Germany  is  that  to  impose  a  greater 
burden  than  their  present  ones  on  them  in  this  respect  would 
seriously  handicap  them  in  competition  with  their  foreign 
rivals  in  industrial  output,  and  this  sentiment  they  have 
known  how  to  impose  upon  the  government  and  the  legislative 
bodies.  But  even  the  little  tangible  good  actually  achieved  by 
this  much-heralded  "social  reform"  legislation  is  clearly  at- 
tributable, not  to  the  initiative  of  the  imperial  government, 
but  to  the  influence  of  the  Socialists  themselves.  Bismarck  it 
was  who  framed  and  pushed  these  bills  through  the  Reichstag 
and  the  Bundesrath,  and  we  have  it  from  his  own  mouth  that 
his  single  motive  in  doing  this  was  to  "take  the  wind  out  of  the 
Socialist  sails,"  as  he  phrased  it.  For  the  Socialists  had,  through 
their  delegates  in  the  Reichstag,  for  years  advocated,  and  very 
forcibly,  too,  just  such  measures,  only  more  comprehensive  and 
shorn  of  the  present  ballast  of  costly  bureaucratic  management, 
and  up  to  the  moment  that  it  struck  Bismarck  as  a  clever  strate- 
gic move  to  take  their  scheme  up  himself,  not  the  slightest  at- 
tention had  been  paid  by  the  government  to  the  Socialist  cry 
for  relieving  the  aged  or  invalid  toiler.  It  is,  therefore,  not  very 
surprising  that  the  Socialist  party,  and  with  it  the  entire 
labouring  class  of  Germany,  does  not  consider  a  large  amount  of 
gratitude  as  the  proper  share  of  the  government  in  this  matter. 

But,  generally  speaking,  the  German  labouring  classes,  whether 
Socialist  in  creed  or  not,  both  in  city  and  country,  have  a  long 
and  serious  list  of  grievances.  Nowhere  else  in  modern  times 
are  the  relations  between  employer  and  employed  so  unsatis- 
factory. Caste  spirit  is  nowhere  else  so  strong.  That  fair 
measure  of  manly  independence  exacted  by  the  worker  and  ac- 
corded by  the  wage-giver  in  other  countries  is  as  yet  not  the 
German  workingm»r>'s.  He  is  still  looked  upon  as  the  serf,  the 


THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  91 

"thing"  of  the  man  whose  bread  he  eats,  and  the  treatment  he 
receives  is,  leaving  exceptions  out  of  the  calculation,  on  a  par 
with  this  low  estimate  in  which  he  is  held.  The  Kaiser's  inti- 
mate adviser  and  friend  for  many  years,  the  late  Baron  Stumm, 
a  multi-millionaire  and  owner  of  huge  iron,  steel  and  coal  inter- 
ests in  the  Saar  district,  was  a  man  who  embodied  to  the  full  this 
type  of  German  employer.  His  sway  over  his  army  of  25,000 
workmen  was  not  only  autocratic  but  tyrannical  as  well.  He 
was  inexorable  in  the  demands  he  made  upon  every  fibre  of  his 
"hands."  He  allowed  no  strikes,  of  course,  no  representations 
by  his  men  about  any  unjust  overseer  or  foremen,  no  complaint 
about  anything  whatever.  He  allowed  no  newspapers  except 
those  approved  by  him  in  the  homes  of  his  men.  He  dictated 
to  them  whom  they  were  to  vote  for  at  elections.  He  discharged 
and  blacklisted  any  man  who  dared  disobey  him  in  the  slight- 
est. In  short,  he  played  high-handed  omnipotence  in  the  large 
district  he  ruled  absolutely  (a  district  popularly  known  as 
"Saarabia"),  about  as  sternly  as  it  is  at  all  given  to  man  to  do. 
A.nd  this  man  was  after  the  Kaiser's  own  heart,  and  his  methods, 
condemned  even  by  nine-tenths  of  the  unprogressive  employ- 
ers  in  the  empire,  found  the  Kaiser's  enthusiastic  endorsement 
on  numerous  public  occasions.  His  case  was  an  extreme  one, 
it  is  true,  but  in  the  main  the  principle  he  unflinchingly  stood 
for,  that  of  absolute  non-interference  by  the  employe*,  is  to  this 
day  the  ruling  one  in  Germany.  On  the  other  hand,  constant 
interference  by  the  employer  in  the  private  affairs  of  his  men  is 
not  only  held  permissible  but  praiseworthy,  and  public  opinion 
supports  this  view.  The  toiler  of  the  wage-earning  classes,  in 
other  words,  is  to  this  day  looked  upon  in  Germany  as  a  being 
deficient  in  sense  to  the  degree  necessitating  constant  surveil- 
lance. He  is,  as  a  rule,  treated  harshly,  often  brutally  and 
cruelly.  Nobody  makes  it  his  business  (always  excepting  the 
Socialist  party)  to  enforce  his  rights  as  an  adult  and  thinking 
fellow-creature,  and  as  a  fellow-citizen  protected  by  the  same 
constitution  which  confers  similar  rights  upon  the  other  classes 
of  the  population. 

Every  attempt  to  enforce  these  constitutional  rights  by  law- 
ful means  is  discouraged,  above  all  by  the  very  power  which 
ought  to  aid  in  enforcing  them — the  courts.  Germany  is  still 


92  GERMANY 

a  land  of  class  legislation,  but  even  more  of  class  administration. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  even-handed  justice,  where  the  parties 
to  a  quarrel  belong  the  one  to  the  upper  crust  and  the  other  to 
the  lower  strata  of  society.  This  is  a  grave  charge  to  make 
against  an  otherwise  so  enlightened  country,  but  it  is  amply 
borne  out  by  the  facts.  Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that  the  rigo- 
rous maintenance  of  such  class  distinctions  and  of  class  rule  has 
bred  in  the  lower  classes  a  fierce  and  inextinguishable  hatred  of 
their  oppressors  ? 

Class  legislation  and  administration!  For  proof  of  this  one 
has  not  far  to  go.  The  records  of  the  German  courts  teem  with 
convictions  and  harsh  sentences  imposed  against  the  poorer 
classes  for  the  most  trifling  offenses.  Strikes,  for  instance,  are 
permissible  under  the  laws.  But  several  late  special  laws,  fixing 
very  severe  penalties  for  strike  sentinels,  for  intimidation,  and 
other  excrescences  incidental  to  industrial  warfare  of  this  kind, 
and,  more  than  these  laws,  the  far-reaching  interpretation  given 
by  the  courts  to  them,  practically  render  the  right  to  strike 
illusory,  or  at  best  very  dangerous.  Any  breach  of  the  peace, 
easily  committed  by  uneducated  men  when  in  a  state  of  intense 
excitement,  are  also  draconically  punished  by  the  courts.  And 
so  it  goes  all  through  the  list.  Similar  offenses  committed  by 
members  of  the  educated  classes  find  much  more  lenient  judges. 
All  through  his  life  of  unrelieved  and  hard  toil  the  German 
workman  meets  severity  and  an  utter  lack  of  sympathy  on  the 
part  of  the  ruling  classes. 

In  the  matter  of  taxation  the  lower  classes  are  again  dis- 
criminated against  most  unfairly.  This  fact  obtrudes  itself 
upon  every  impartial  observer  in  Germany,  and  it  is  this  which 
gives  the  Socialist  agitator  his  heaviest  ammunition.  Here  are, 
for  instance,  some  figures,  taken  from  German  official  sources, 
bearing  out  the  claim.  The  German  imperial  budget  for  1898-99 
was  4,980,000,000  marks,  or  about  1,200  million  dollars.  Of 
this  sum  fourteen  per  cent,  went  to  the  army  and  ten  per  cent, 
to  the  navy.  About  twenty  dollars  per  capita  is  what  the 
imperial  government  required.  This,  be  it  noted,  does  not  in- 
clude all  the  taxes  raised  by  the  separate  states,  towns,  and 
provinces  for  their  own  support.  Of  course,  the  labouring  popu- 
lation has  to  pay  its  full  share  for  this  support  of  both  army  and 


THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  93 

navy,  about  seventy-three  out  of  every  hundred  serving  belong- 
ing to  that  class.  Now,  where  does  a  large  part  of  the  taxes 
come  from?  The  tax  and  revenue  system  in  Germany  seems 
to  be  gotten  up  so  as  to  lie  with  crushing  force  upon  the  weary 
backs  of  the  poor.  For  the  whole  sum  from  import  duties  for 
1901  is  478,978,000  marks.  Of  this  the  duty  on  cereals  was 
131,557,000  marks;  on  petroleum,  70,913,000;  on  coffee, 
64,503,000;  on  lard,  12,540,000;  on  cotton,  yarn  and  finished, 
8,804,000;  on  meats,  8,459,000;  on  rice,  5,365,000;  on  salt  her- 
rings, 3,045,000;  on  cheese,  2,991,000;  on  tea,  2,856,000;  on 
eggs,  2,793,000;  on  cattle  and  sheep,  2,666,000;  on  butter  and 
margarine,  2,608,000;  on  table  fats,  2,382,000;  etc.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  these  articles,  which  are  so  greatly  enhanced  in  price 
in  Germany  by  high  duties,  are  all  articles  for  the  poor  man's 
consumption.  Then,  as  to  the  internal  revenue  taxes.  Three  of 
the  principal  ones,  viz.,  on  tobacco,  sugar,  and  salt,  and  the  tax 
on  home-made  spirituous  liquor,  figure  in  the  returns  for  1901, 
respectively,  as  11,960,000  marks,  111,380,000  and  48,943,000; 
and  liquor,  which  is  twice  taxed  for  internal  consumption,  is 
put  down  as  109,768,000  and  18,087,000,  while  the  brewing  tax 
amounts  to  31,136,000.  The  government  which  thus  raises  the 
price  of  nearly  every  foodstuff  and  liquid  the  poor  require 
encourages  the  distiller  (who  is  nearly  always  owner  of  a  big 
rural  estate)  in  every  possible  way. 

From  all  the  facts  cited  above  it  will  be  apparent  that  the 
lower  classes  in  Germany,  from  whose  number  after  all  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  Socialist  party  are  largely  drawn,  though  the 
small  tradespeople,  shopkeepers,  and  other  strata  of  the  lower 
middle  class  have  of  late  years  also  flocked  to  it  in  ever  increas- 
ing numbers,  have  indeed  serious  reason  for  complaint,  and 
that  it  is  not  astonishing  that  they  wish,  somehow  and  anyhow, 
for  a  radical  change  of  system.  It  must  not  be  supposed,  how- 
ever, that  the  higher  classes  in  Germany  are  a  unit  in  thus  keep- 
ing the  lower  classes  under  by  fair  means  and  foul.  The  best 
mind  of  the  nation,  in  fact,  not  only  recognizes  the  dire  need  of 
meting  out  a  fuller  measure  of  justice  to  the  labouring  classes, 
but  freely  acknowledges  the  great  guilt  of  the  nation  committed 
in  its  treatment  of  this  part  of  it,  the  one  standing  most  in  need 
of  kindness,  forbearance,  and  consideration.  Movements  like 


94  GERMANY 

those  set  afoot  by  the  orthodox  Pastor  von  Bodelschwingh  and 
by  the  liberal  Pastor  Naumann,  the  latter  amounting  to  an  or- 
ganized attempt  to  fight  Socialism  with  a  counter-party  having 
similar  aims  but  exempt  from  all  strictly  Socialist  features, 
show  that  this  consciousness  of  guilt  has  penetrated  large  strata 
of  the  upper  classes.  The  clergy  all  over  Germany,  in  fact,  is 
more  and  more  coming  around  to  the  opinion  that  instead  of 
treating  the  Socialist,  singly  and  en  masse,  as  an  enemy  worthy 
only  to  be  exterminated,  the  proper  way  is  to  try  and  understand, 
and  if  possible  rectify,  his  just  grievances.  This  of  late  is  espe- 
cially true  of  the  Protestant  clergy,  who  have  allowed  these  mil- 
lions of  the  disinherited  of  this  earth  to  drift  away  from  their  in- 
fluence and  teachings,  while  the  Catholic  priesthood  in  Germany 
still  persists  in  treating  them  as  accursed  of  God  and  man. 
But  the  highest  trained  intellect  in  the  empire,  the  professors 
and  university  teachers,  have  likewise  begun  to  preach  a  different 
mode  of  combating  Socialism  than  the  one  in  vogue  with  them 
for  so  long.  They  have  seen  a  not  inconsiderable  portion  of 
their  former  hearers  and  students  turn  to  Socialism  and  swell 
the  rising  flood  of  the  "learned  proletariat"  of  the  country,  and 
their  cool  and  haughty  indifference  is  fast  disappearing  with 
such  an  object  lesson  before  their  eyes. 

An  increasing  number  of  the  most  noted  professors  of  econom- 
ics, history,  and  political  science  in  the  leading  universities  have 
under  this  new  impulse  begun  to  publish  writings  in  which  the 
idea  is  clearly  brought  out  that  to  cure  the  nation  of  its  Socialism 
it  is  above  all  necessary  to  cure  the  evils  and  to  redress  the 
Wrongs  which  have  caused  the  movement.  These  writings 
have  met  with  just  as  violent  opposition  as  acclaim,  but  in 
any  case  they  have  not  failed  of  a  deep  impression  which  augurs 
well  for  the  future.  In  a  recent  number  of  the  Deutsche  Monats- 
schrift,  one  of  the  leading  German  magazines,  Prof.  Rudolph 
Sohm,  of  the  University  of  Breslau,  advocated  a  perfect  pro- 
gramme for  the  regeneration  of  German  political  life,  and  in  this 
the  idea  of  rendering  tardy  justice  to  the  German  laboring  classes 
occupied  a  prominent  place. 

It  is  indeed  necessary  to  remember  the  historic  development 
of  Germany  in  order  to  understand  the  low  political  and  social 
status  of  the  lower  class — the  labouring  man,  the  mechanic, 


THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT  95 

the  small  shopkeeper,  the  farm  hand.  This  class  has  never  been 
able  to  acquire  what  the  same  class  of  the  population  has  ac- 
quired in  France  since  the  great  Revolution,  in  England  during 
the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century,  on  social  and  political 
lines,  and  what  has  been  the  birthright  of  every  man  in  the  great 
American  Republic  since  its  foundation.  The  only  revolution 
that  ever  took  place  in  Germany,  that  of  1848-49,  proceeded 
from  the  middle  classes,  and  had  purely  political  reform  for  its 
aim.  It  lasted,  besides,  too  short  a  time,  and  was  not  successful 
in  the  end.  When  its  waves  had  rolled  back,  things  returned 
much  to  their  old  level.  Thus  it  was  that  the  status  of  the  lower 
classes,  and  of  the  poorer  middle  classes,  had  virtually  not 
changed  when  Lassalle  and  Marx  and  the  other  earlier  Socialist 
leaders  began  to  make  their  appeals  to  the  "proletariat";  and, 
excepting  the  political  and  social  awakening  for  which  the 
Socialist  party  is  responsible  in  Germany,  there  has  come  no 
other  to  the  masses  of  the  lower  strata.  They  are  still,  even 
where  the  leaven  of  Socialism  has  worked,  rather  behind  their 
fellows  in  countries  more  favoured  politically,  so  far  as  self- 
respect,  maturity  of  convictions  and  sturdy  independence  are 
concerned.  These  reasons  explain,  of  course,  partially  the 
remarkable  rise  of  Socialism  as  a  political  and  social  power  in 
Germany.  For  there  is  no  gainsaying  the  fact  that  it  has  had, 
in  many  respects,  a  salutary  effect  on  the  masses  there.  It  has 
quickened  the  intellect  of  the  worker,  and  has  first  enabled  him 
to  think,  however  faultily,  on  political  and  economic  topics. 
It  has,  by  organizing  thousands  of  social  clubs,  given  these 
whilom  dull  and  torpid  masses  a  genuine  taste  for  and  appreci- 
ation of  purely  aesthetic  pleasures,  such  as  music,  singing, 
theatrical  performances,  concerts,  and  above  all,  books.  The 
Socialists  in  Germany  have  done  what  the  government  had  left 
undone,  viz.,  founded  thousands  of  workingmen's  libraries. 
The  Socialist  press  has  in  this  respect  done  wonders. 

Thus,  looking  over  the  vast  field  of  German  Socialism,  the 
unbiassed  observer  finds  much  that  he  cannot  help  admiring. 
The  cohorts  and  legions  that  obey  the  Socialist  trumpet  call 
are  by  no  means  the  dullards  and  fools  which  persons  not  ac- 
quainted with  the  real  facts  are  too  prone  to  fancy  them.  What 
the  final  issue  of  the  great  struggle  v.l"  be  which  the  Socialist 


96  GERMANY 

party,  single-handed,  is  making  against  all  the  powers  of  gov- 
ernment and  society  there,  it  is  too  early  to  predict.  Certain  it 
is,  however,  that  the  party  is  making  headway,  and  that  it  is 
gaining  over  to  its  ranks  an  increasing  percentage  of  the  cultured 
middle  classes  as  well.  It  is  also  certain  that  just  at  present  at 
least  there  is  no  prospect  of  a  more  liberal  form  and  spirit  of 
government  save  and  alone  through  this  very  Socialist  party. 
Shorn  of  its  revolutionary  character,  freed  from  its  former  vis- 
ionary features,  and  reduced  to  a  radical  and  democratic  reform 
programme,  there  seems  no  valid  reason  why  this  party  should 
not  have  a  great  future  in  store.  It  alone,  of  the  score  of  politi- 
cal parties  and  factions  in  the  Empire,  has  great  ideals  and  aims, 
and  it  alone  is  a  living  and  growing  force,  throbbing  with  power, 
with  hope,  and  with  faith  in  its  own  destiny. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING 

IT  was  in  August  of  last  year  that  Mr.  David  B.  Henderson, 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  while  on  a  week's  stay 
in  Berlin,  made  the  casual  remark  to  me:  "Berlin,  for  an 
American,  is  the  most  delicate  ground  to  tread." 

He  illustrated  his  meaning  by  some  additional  talk.  What  he 
meant,  in  fact,  was  that  Germany,  as  the  most  formidable  rival 
of  this  nation  in  political  and  commercial  expansion,  required 
on  that  account  the  fullest  exercise  of  American  tact,  American 
love  of  fair  play,  and  American  rightly  directed  energy  in  com- 
peting with  the  lusty  empire,  competing  in  such  a  way  as  to  give 
no  needless  offense  and  yet  to  stand  always  firmly  on  our  own 
national  rights  and  to  see  to  it  that  no  serious  American  interests 
are  injured. 

Mr.  Henderson's  view  in  this  respect  may  probably  be  taken  as 
the  typical  American  one,  so  far  as  Germany  is  concerned.  And 
it  is  indeed  true  that  the  two  countries,  if  the  hotspurs  on  both 
sides  were  allowed  to  have  their  way  unchecked,  might  easily 
come  to  serious  misunderstandings,  for  their  interests  and  their 
aims  clash  at  many  points,  no  matter  if  the  diplomats  and  states- 
men on  both  sides  of  the  water  studiously  avoid  mention  of  them, 
and  if  their  efforts — as  is  but  right  and  within  their  proper  func- 
tions— are  ceaselessly  bent  in  the  direction  of  smoothing  over 
difficulties  that  have  arisen,  and  explaining  away,  with  more  or 
less  success,  unpalatable  facts. 

But  there  is  this  about  commerce — that  it  both  approximates 
and  antagonizes  mutual  interests.  In  the  long  run,  as  history 
teaches  us,  commerce  has  made  both  for  peace  and  for  war.  The 
whole  eighteenth  century  was  a  struggle  for  commercial  and 
colonial  supremacy  between  England  and  France,  and  the  latter's 
final  overthrow  was  the  root  of  that  deep-seated  enmity  which 
indirectly  led  to  the  twenty-years'  struggle  between  the  two 

97 


98  GERMANY 

nations  at  the  outset  of  the  nineteenth  century.  On  the  other 
hand,  our  civilization  of  to-day,  with  its  elements  taken  from  a 
score  of  different  nations,  is  largely  the  product  of  commerce. 

The  great  advance  of  Germany  of  late  years,  both  as  a  manu- 
facturing and  trading  nation,  has  riveted  the  eyes  of  all  thought- 
ful Americans.  Isolated  facts  in  plenty  have  become  public 
here,  and  have  been  variously  interpreted.  It  will  be  of  interest 
to  summarize  on  this  occasion  the  chief  features  of  this  rise  and 
of  the  present  status. 

Up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war  with  France,  viz.,  1870, 
Germany  had  been  mainly  an  agricultural  country.  Her  com- 
merce was  relatively  unimportant,  and  within  her  territory  there 
existed  not  a  single  large  banking  institution.  Her  industries 
were  in  an  undeveloped  state,  and  were  carried  on  with  extreme 
caution  and  on  small  capital.  The  more  complicated  and 
highly  finished  manufactures  she  imported  from  either  France  or 
England.  Enterprise,  though  doubtless  present  in  a  latent  form, 
was  hampered  by  narrow  conditions.  From  this  stage  Germany 
emerged  after  the  successful  end  of  that  war,  progressing 
at  first — up  to  1885 — at  a  slow  rate,  but  afterwards  at  a  more 
and  more  accelerated  pace,  in  the  same  proportion  as  she  learned 
by  experience  her  own  full  powers.  The  phenomenal  period  of 
expansion,  however,  dates  only  since  the  year  1895 — the  time 
when  the  commercial  treaties  she  had  effected  with  six  of  her 
most  important  neighbours  had  begun  to  take  complete  effect. 

A  faithful  thermometer  of  this  growth  is  furnished  by  her 
commercial  relations  with  this  country.  In  1880  she  bought 
only  $40,000,000  worth  of  goods  from  this  country,  and  this  was 
almost  six  per  cent,  of  her  total  imports.  This  amount  was  later 
on  again  reduced,  under  the  workings  of  Bismarck's  protective 
tariff.  In  1882  she  bought  but  $28,000,000  worth  of  us,  or  3.7 
per  cent,  of  her  total  imports;  in  1884  but  $30,000,000,  or  3.8; 
in  1885  but  $29,000,000,  or  4.1  per  cent.;  and  in  1886  only 
$25,500,000,  or  3.6  per  cent.  That  was  the  lowest  ebb  in  her 
commercial  relations  with  us,  as  it  was  in  her  whole  material 
condition  since  the  war  with  France. 

But  from  that  time  on  the  figures  began  to  jump.  In  1889 
Germany  bought  $76,000,000  worth  of  us;  in  1897  the  value  of 
American  goods  purchased  by  her  had  gone  up  to  $161,000,000, 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING  99 

or  13.5  per  cent,  of  the  total;  and  in  1900  she  has  bought  an  even 
$250,000,000  worth  of  us,  which  figure  remained  nearly  stationary 
last  year,  despite  the  general  depression  in  Germany.  Thus, 
within  fourteen  years'  time  she  had  multiplied  tenfold  her  pur- 
chases of  us. 

The  total  volume  of  her  import  and  export  trade  rose  alone 
in  the  decade  1890-1900  from  7  2-10  billions  of  marks,  or  about 
$1,800,000,000,  to  10  3-4  billions  of  marks,  about  $2,650,000,000. 

In  1890  the  total  imports  and  exports  of  the  world  amounted 
to  $18,000,000,000,  and  of  this  Germany  claimed  one-tenth. 
In  1900  the  world  figures  showed  total  imports  and  exports  of 
$21,000,000,000,  and  of  this  Germany  could  claim  over  twelve 
per  cent.,  or  about  one-eighth.  England  that  year  showed  a 
volume  of  4.1  billions  in  exports  and  imports,  whereof  two- 
thirds  were  imports  and  but  one-third  exports.  The  United 
States  ranked  below  Germany,  with  2.3  billions,  whereof 
nearly  two-thirds  were  exports  and  but  one-third  imports ;  while 
France  figured  with  slightly  over  1.5  billions,  imports  and 
exports  being  almost  evenly  apportioned. 

As  to  capital,  too,  the  growth  of  Germany  was  surprising, 
especially  if  her  poverty  thirty  years  ago  be  given  due  weight. 
The  total  British  capital  invested  in  1899  in  foreign  countries  is 
given  in  the  authoritative  work  on  "The  History  of  British 
Trade,"  by  Percy  R.  Broemel  (London,  1899)  at  $10,000,000,000, 
and  the  interest  drawn  from  it,  at  an  average  of  four  and  one-half 
per  cent.,  at  $450,000,000.  Of  this  $800,000,000  are  invested 
by  British  capitalists  in  this  country,  and  about  $3,000,000,000 
in  foreign  railroads  and  $200,000,000  in  foreign  mines. 

For  Germany  there  are  tangible  and  reliable  facts  obtainable 
as  to  this  matter,  while  as  to  England  the  figures,  after  all,  are 
largely  based  on  private  information.  In  1898  and  again  in 
1900,  with  the  other  official  material  submitted  by  the  German 
government  to  the  Reichstag,  during  the  pendency  of  the  naval 
increase  bills,  there  were  exhaustive  figures  collected  by  the 
Foreign  Office  through  its  consular  and  diplomatic  corps  all  over 
the  world.  These  showed  3.4  billions  in  foreign  papers  held 
by  Germans,  and  another  1.8  billions  invested  by  them  in 
foreign  industrial  enterprises,  such  as  railroads,  mines,  factories, 
street  car  lines,  etc.,  of  this  sum  $500,000,000  alone  in  South 


ioo  GERMANY 

America,  $250,000,000  each  in  North  America  and  Africa,  and 
the  remainder  elsewhere.  The  grand  total  held  by  German 
citizens  in  foreign  investments  of  every  kind  amounted  to 
$5,000,000,000,  or  half  the  sum  held  by  Englishmen.  When  it 
is  considered  that  this  accumulation  of  capital  represents,  not 
entirely  but  certainly  largely,  the  efforts  of  only  thirty  years, 
while  in  the  case  of  England  the  accumulation  is  of  much  longer 
growth,  the  facts  thus  presented  are  astounding.  True,  how- 
ever, that  quite  a  percentage  of  these  foreign  investments  of 
Germany's — certainly  a  larger  one  than  in  the  case  of  England — 
are  financially  rather  unsound,  as  in  the  case  of  Servia,  Greece, 
Portugal,  Argentina  and  others. 

Perhaps  no  more  striking  illustration  of  this  rapid  accumulation 
of  capital  can  be  given  for  Germany  than  by  briefly  tracing  the 
simultaneous  growth  of  one  of  her  financial  institutions  of  to-day. 
A  score  of  gigantic  ones  have  arisen  within  the  period  referred 
to,  such  as  the  Reichsbank,  or  Imperial  Bank,  which  last  year 
did  business  to  the  tune  of  189  billion  marks,  or  nearly  $46,000,- 
000,000,  and  which  now  occupies  under  its  safe  yet  enterprising 
president,  Doctor  Koch,  an  honored  position  equaling  that  of  the 
Banque  de  France  and  of  the  Bank  of  England;  the  Dresdner 
Bank,  the  Disconto  Gesellschaft,  the  Prussian  Mortgage  Bank, 
and  others.  But  for  the  purposes  of  illustration,  the  Deutsche 
Bank,  a  purely  private  and  unaided  institution,  will  serve  best. 
This  bank  started  in  April,  1870,  in  Berlin,  with  a  modest  capital 
of  15  million  marks,  or  about  $3,750,000.  It  had  in  that  year 
a  total  business  of  about  $60,000,000,  and  distributed  a  dividend 
of  five  per  cent.  Ten  years  later  its  stock  capital  had  risen  to 
$13,000,000,  and  it  had  done  a  business  of  $2,500,000,000,  and 
distributed  dividends  of  ten  per  cent.  Another  decade  saw  it 
advanced  to  $25,000,000  in  capital,  $7,000,000,000  of  business, 
and  still  ten  per  cent,  dividends.  In  1900  its  capital  had  grown 
to  $49,000,000,  its  business  to  $12,000,000,000,  and  its  dividends 
to  eleven  per  cent.  And  last  year,  despite  the  severe  financial 
panic  that  had  been  rampant  through  Germany,  and  that  had 
partially  paralyzed  enterprise,  the  capital  stock  had  been  in- 
creased to  $50,000,000,  the  volume  of  its  business  to  almost 
$13,000,000,000,  and  its  dividends  had  remained  eleven  per  cent. 

At  the  counters  of  this  bank  German  shareholders  received 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING          101 

last  year  payments  of  interest  or  dividends  upon  moneys  in- 
vested in  495  industrial  enterprises  or  government  and  private 
loans.  The  institution  has  floated  State  loans  for  Prussia, 
Bavaria,  Wurttemberg,  Hesse  and  a  score  of  other  German 
States  and  large  cities.  It  has  launched  loans  for  Austria,  Chile, 
Denmark,  Italy,  Mexico,  the  United  States,  Sweden,  Egypt, 
Rumania,  and  other  countries.  It  has  founded  or  materially 
assisted  in  founding  several  hundred  industrial  enterprises,  many 
of  them  in  far-away  countries,  such  as  South  America,  Central 
America,  China,  etc.,  and  financed  other  enterprises  like  the 
German-Atlantic  £»ank,  the  German-Asiatic  Bank,  the  largest 
German  electric  and  mining  societies,  the  Anatolian  and  the 
Macedonian  railroads,  and  to  a  large  extent  the  Northern  Pacific 
Railroad  as  well.  The  leading  position  of  Germany  in  electric 
enterprises  of  every  description  is  largely  due  to  it.  In  a  word, 
it  is  an  epitome  of  German  industrial  and  commercial  progress 
during  recent  years. 

From  a  country  extremely  cautious  in  investing  its  funds,  as 
was  the  case  until  1870,  Germany  has  become  one  of  the  most 
liberal  and  daring  investors  and  promoters.  It  is  again  her 
banks,  of  course,  which  illustrate  this  best.  During  a  decade  of 
extraordinary  prosperity,  they  fathered  thousands  of  industrial 
ventures,  some  of  them  inflated  and  financially  unsound,  it  is  true, 
and  supplying  far  beyond  the  legitimate  needs  of  the  country, 
but  the  vast  majority  of  them  conceived  with  great  shrewdness 
and  keen  business  foresight.  They  started  and  maintained  or 
promoted  factories,  electric  power  plants,  railroads,  new  steamer 
lines,  shipyards,  mines,  street  car  lines,  etc.,  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  and  in  the  main  showed  in  these  transactions  a  pro- 
gressive wisdom  and  a  clear-sighted  optimism  which  were,  until 
recent  years,  entirely  foreign  to  the  national  character.  The 
same  applies  to  foreign  financial  investments.  The  holdings  of 
German  capitalists,  mostly  small  ones,  in  Russian  securities 
alone  amount  to  twice  the  amount  of  the  indemnity  France  paid 
her  after  the  war.  The  Balkan  States  owe  German  faith  in  their 
future,  as  expressed  by  loans  and  investments  aggregating  some 
$200,000,000,  a  great  deal  of  their  economic  rise.  The  same  can 
be  said  of  Hungary,  whose  young  industry  was  very  largely 
financed  by  German  promoters.  German  holdings  there  are  com- 


102  GERMANY 

puted  at  about  $120,000,000.  The  fact  that  Asia  Minor  is  again, 
after  centuries  of  sleep,  coming  to  the  front  as  a  promising  coun- 
try, is  also  partly  due  to  German  capital.  This  is  more  or  less 
true  of  South  and  Central  America  and  of  Mexico,  of  the  Dutch 
Indies  (where  of  late  much  German  capital  has  been  put  to  good 
use,  especially  in  Sumatra),  of  China,  of  Japan,  of  Cochin-China, 
and  Siam,  of  Greece  and  Portugal. 

The  amazing  growth  of  German  cities  is  another  illustration  in 
point.  Many  of  them  have  outstripped  Chicago  in  their  ratio  of 
increase.  Berlin,  for  instance,  grew  within  thirty  years  from 
720,000  to  1,888,326;  Leipsic  from  100,000  to  455,000;  Munich 
and  Dresden  from  120,000  to  500,000  and  400,000  respectively; 
and  so  forth.  The  country  grew  during  the  lustrum  1895-1900 
at  the  rate  of  eight  per  cent.,  or  4,000,000,  showing  a  total  of 
56,345,014,  putting  Germany  easily  in  the  second  place  in  Europe 
as  regards  population.  Significant,  too,  is  the  very  small  number 
of  German  emigrants  during  the  same  period. 

Germany's  national  debt  is  very  high,  being  12,950  millions 
of  marks,  or  about  $3,250,000,000,  as  against  $1,900,000,000 
owed  by  this  country,  and  whereof  $850,000,000  belong  to 
individual  States  of  the  Union.  But  of  Germany's  total  debt 
not  less  than  10,450  million  marks,  or  five-sixths,  belong  to  the 
separate  States  of  the  empire,  and  this  vast  sum  represents 
largely  the  value  of  the  railroads,  these  having  been  purchased 
by  the  various  governments,  and  have  thus  become  prime  sources 
of  revenue  for  the  public  treasuries.  Other  profitable  public 
works,  such  as  canals,  mines,  government  factories,  etc.,  are  also 
included  in  this  total  of  national  debt.  These  institutions  are 
more  or  less  profitable,  and  relieve  to  that  extent  the  strain  of 
taxation. 

This  fact  must  be  borne  in  mind  in  looking  at  Germany's 
national  debt,  for  it  alone  gives  the  clue  to  its  real  inwardness. 

There  have  been  several  special  causes  in  operation  of  late 
which  undoubtedly  bore  a  considerable  share  in  Germany's  com- 
mercial prosperity.  These  were  the  going  into  effect  of  the  new 
Imperial  Civil  Code,  the  new  tax  system,  and  the  great  im- 
provement in  both  the  postal  department  and  the  railroad 
system. 

As  to  the  new  civil  code,  which  went  into  effect  in  1900,  that 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING         103 

has  for  the  first  time  given  all  Germany  a  uniform  law  in  civil 
matters  and  has  been  an  immense  step  forward.  It  took  the 
place  of  a  number  of  codes,  differing  widely  from  each  other  in 
their  provisions  and  spirit,  and  of  which  the  Imperial  Law 
Collection,  the  Prussian  Common  Law,  the  French  Code  Civil  of 
Napoleon  (in  force  up  to  that  time  in  the  Rhine  districts),  and 
the  Saxon,  Bavarian,  and  a  dozen  other  codes  were  the  leading 
ones.  This  new  civil  code  has  for  the  first  time  regulated  uni- 
formly the  questions  of  minority,  of  guardianship,  of  the  marriage 
relation,  and  other  very  important  matters.  But  so  far  as  the 
commercial  and  industrial  classes  of  Germany  are  concerned,  its 
benefits  consist  mainly  in  giving  laws  devised  and  fitted  to  the 
modern  conditions  of  trade,  of  the  modern  wage  system,  etc., 
which  have  equal  force  all  over  the  empire.  Its  provisions  in 
this  respect  are  acknowledged  to  be  thoroughly  adapted  to  present 
conditions,  and  were  the  joint  product  of  a  number  of  Germany's 
ablest  jurists  who  acted  largely  on  information  furnished  them  by 
chambers  of  commerce  and  other  bodies  possessing  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  legitimate  wants  of  commerce.  Under 
the  administration  of  this  new  code  fraudulent  bankruptcy  and 
similar  banes  of  commercial  life  in  other  countries  have  become 
practically  unknown,  and  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt 
that  it  has  become  a  great  boon  to  the  whole  commercial  class 
of  Germany,  and  that  it  is  directly  and  indirectly  furthering 
its  material  prosperity  immensely. 

Similar  benefits,  although  of  a  different  kind,  have  been  de- 
rived by  this  same  class  from  the  operation  of  the  present 
tax  system  of  Prussia  and  of  nearly  every  other  German  State. 
This  new  system  is  the  income  tax  and  tax  upon  profit-bearing 
capital,  taking  the  place  of  a  variety  of  unevenly  adjusted  taxes 
which  bore  with  much  less  equity  upon  the  population,  and  more 
especially  the  portion  of  it  engaged  in  trade  and  manufacture. 
Prussia  gave  the  example,  her  recently  deceased  finance  minister, 
Doctor  von  Miquel,  being  the  creator  of  the  new  tax  law. 
It  is  so  ingeniously  and  fairly  constructed  that  it  really  comes 
near  the  ideal  of  placing  the  burden  of  direct  taxation  according 
to  the  ability  to  bear  it,  and  unlike  the  former  direct  taxes  it 
does  not  discriminate  in  favour  of  the  privileged  classes  and 
against  the  middle  classes.  The  income  tax  applies  to  all  in- 


io4  GERMANY 

comes  above  900  marks,  or  about  $220,  per  annum,  but  beginning 
with  three  and  one-half  per  cent,  of  the  amount  of  income,  after 
deducting  all  running  and  other  expenses,  it  gradually  rises  in 
percentage  with  the  amount  of  the  income  itself.  Its  provisions 
are  rigidly  but  justly  and  equitably  enforced,  and  though  during 
the  two  first  years  after  its  taking  effect  there  was  considerable 
friction  and  complaint,  these  complaints  have  now  almost 
entirely  subsided,  as  both  public  and  officials  became  better 
acquainted  with  its  workings,  and  after  some  needless  official 
chicanery  had  been  done  away  with.  The  tax  upon  interest- 
bearing  capital  is  conceived  and  executed  in  a  like  spirit,  and 
gives  no  cause  for  reasonable  criticism.  Under  the  operations 
of  this  law  the  revenues  from  this  source — forming  now  the 
bulk  of  the  general  revenues  of  the  various  State  governments, 
while  the  empire  now  as  before  relies  on  tariff  duties  and  other 
imposts — have  steadily  increased,  and  show  a  remarkable  sta- 
bility, these  conditions,  of  course,  likewise  possessing  a  tendency 
to  steady  and  conserve  trade. 

The  railway  system  of  Germany,  one  of  the  most  extensive 
and  soundest  in  the  world,  is  largely  owned  by  the  various  State 
governments.  Out  of  a  total  length  of  about  50,000  kilometres, 
or  32,000  miles,  all  but  4,000  kilometres  of  it  belongs  to  the 
States  within  which  the  several  lines  are  operated.  From  a 
purely  fiscal  point  of  view  they  have  all  along  been  very  suc- 
cessful. The  clear  profits  from  them  have  steadily  increased. 
In  the  case  of  Prussia,  for  instance,  its  30,000  kilometres  of  rail- 
roads yielded  a  net  revenue  of  $80,000,000  ten  years  ago.  Last 
year  this  sum  had  grown  to  about  $150,000,000.  By  so  much 
the  burden  of  taxation  resting  on  the  population  of  Prussia  has 
been  lessened.  The  case  holds  good  as  to  the  other  States  of 
Germany.  This  method  of  owning  and  managing  railroads  has, 
however,  its  disadvantages  as  well.  With  a  total  lack  of  com- 
petition grew  up  a  lack  of  enterprise  and  an  unwillingness  to 
keep  step  with  improvements.  The  rolling  stock  became  in- 
sufficient for  the  demands  of  both  passenger  and  freight  service, 
and  its  quality  suffered  as  well.  The  scale  of  comfort  and  ac- 
commodations began  to  perceptibly  sink.  For  years  there  was 
much  just  complaint  on  this  score. 

But  during  the  past  two  years  there  has  come  decided  improve- 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING          105 

ment.  The  rolling  stock  has  been  both  greatly  improved  and 
increased,  and  progressive  methods  have  been  introduced  in 
every  department.  The  average  speed  of  trains  has  materially 
grown.  A  number  of  the  leading  commercial  centres,  such 
as  Berlin,  Hamburg,  Cologne,  Frankfort-on-Main,  Nuremberg, 
Stuttgart,  Leipzig,  Konigsberg,  Dantzic  and  Stettin,  have  been 
brought  nearer  together  by  the  establishment  of  lightning  ex- 
press trains.  Some  of  them  are  as  fast  as  the  fastest  in  England 
and  the  United  States,  and  faster  than  any  in  France.  Dining- 
room  and  sleeping  cars  have  been  multiplied,  and  much  more 
done  for  the  comfort  of  passengers  than  heretofore.  The  long 
delays  in  the  delivery  of  freight,  which  were  formerly  chronic 
during  certain  seasons,  owing  to  an  insufficiency  of  cars  and 
locomotives,  have  ceased,  and  even  the  exceedingly  high  freight 
rates  have  been  somewhat  reduced.  In  a  word,  there  has  been 
decided  progress  made,  and  German  merchants  are  correspond- 
ingly profiting  thereby. 

Similar  improvement  has  taken  place  in  the  postal  department. 
Deliveries  are  now  more  frequent  and  much  prompter  in  the 
German  cities  of  large  size  than  in  corresponding  American  ones, 
and  the  mail  matter  is  likewise  more  frequently  collected.  The 
pneumatic  letter  delivery  in  Berlin  and  other  centres  insures, 
for  seven  cents,  arrival  at  its  address  within  half  an  hour,  and 
works  more  rapidly,  cheaply  and  safely  than  any  contrivance 
in  New  York  or  elsewhere.  The  reliability  and  probity  of  the 
postal  department  and  its  200,000  employes  is  proverbial  in 
Germany.  There  are  several  features,  alien  to  our  American 
postal  service,  but  worthy  of  imitation,  in  Germany.  The 
most  important,  perhaps,  is  its  system  of  making  payments  and 
collections  for  a  trifling  fee,  but  with  great  security,  speed,  and 
general  satisfaction,  there  being,  besides,  absolutely  no  risk 
to  sender  or  recipient  in  this  species  of  transaction.  The  parcels 
post  system  is  also  far  superior  to  our  express  service,  both  in 
despatch,  reliability,  and  cost.  The  telegraph  and  telephone  are, 
it  will  be  remembered,  exclusively  managed  by  the  German 
postal  authorities,  and  while  the  former  is  hardly  more  efficient 
than  our  telegraph  service,  the  telephone  service  in  Germany 
is  certainly  superior  and  just  as  certainly  much  lower  in  price. 

These  four  factors  are  points  in  which  the  German  merchant 


io6  GERMANY 

has  to  a  certain  extent  the  advantage  over  his  American  com- 
petitor. The  impression  prevails  widely  in  this  country  that  he 
enjoys  an  even  more  decided  advantage  in  having  cheaper  and 
more  reliable  labour.  I  am  not  quite  ready  to  admit  that  in  the 
matter  of  labour  supply  the  German  employer  does  enjoy  an  ad- 
vantage when  comparing  him  in  that  respect  with  the  American 
employer.  Certainly,  he  does  not  pay  as  high  wages,  and  in  a 
narrow  sense  it  is  also  probably  true  that  German  labour  is  more 
reliable,  if  by  that  word  is  meant  that  strikes  are  rarer  and  that 
whims  are  fewer.  As  to  strikes,  for  instance,  last  year  cannot 
be  taken  as  a  fair  type,  because  of  the  wide-spread  depression 
and  the  consequent  large  number  of  unemployed.  But  the 
year  before,  1900,  may  be  cited.  In  that  year,  then,  there  were 
altogether  1,336  strikes  in  the  empire,  in  which  154,017  persons 
were  engaged.  Of  these  strikes,  331  were  wholly  successful; 
429  were  partially  successful,  and  528  were  wholly  unsuccessful. 
This  shows,  indeed,  a  very  much  smaller  number  of  strikes  and 
strikers  when  compared  with  this  country,  even  taking  the  differ- 
ence in  population  into  consideration. 

Ordinary  wages  in  Germany  are  still  decidedly  lower  than  in 
America,  and  they  average  for  unskilled  labour  not  more  than 
3  marks,  or  72  cents,  per  day;  skilled  labour  averages  between 
$5.00  and  $10.00  per  week,  although  there  are  certain  branches 
and  cities  where  higher  wages  are  paid.  So  that  in  this  respect, 
too,  the  German  employer  is  at  an  advantage.  This  is,  however, 
partially  offset  by  the  obligatory  contributions  he  has  to  pay 
towards  the  invalid,  sick  and  old-age  relief  for  his  employe's,  and 
by  the  premiums  he  has  to  pay  on  the  accident  insurance  policies, 
and  for  pensions  granted  widows  and  orphans  of  men  who  lost 
their  lives  in  his  service. 

In  comparison  with  the  English  workman,  the  German  is  also 
more  sober  and  steady-going,  but  I  think  in  both  these  respects 
he  is  inferior  to  the  average  American  wage-worker. 

The  German  workman  is,  besides,  docile  and  obedient,  quiet 
and  well-behaved.  He  is  also  more  economical  than  his 
American  fellow.  But  he  has  several  sericus  drawbacks, 
when  compared  with  the  average  American  toiler,  and  these, 
I  think,  more  than  make  up  for  his  good  points,  so  far  at  least 
as  the  benefits  derived  by  the  employer  are  concerned. 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING         107 

The  German  workman  is  not  so  strong  physically  as  the 
American.  This  is  constitutional  and  largely  hereditary. 
He  himself  is  underfed,  and  his  whole  race,  his  forefathers,  be- 
fore him.  The  principal  foodstuffs  are  so  high  in  Germany  that 
the  workman's  earnings  do  not  suffice  to  buy  him  and  his  family 
enough  nitrogenous  and  nourishing  food.  Even  the  lower 
grades  of  fresh  meat  sell  too  high  for  his  purse,  and  so  he  is  obliged 
to  sustain  life  and  strength  as  best  he  may  on  potatoes,  sausage, 
bits  of  bacon,  lard,  rye  bread,  "acorn  coffee,"  with  occasional 
vegetables,  fresh  or  canned.  Instead  of  the  more  expensive 
beer,  he  drinks  potato  brandy,  which  is  injurious  and  full  of 
fusel  oil.  With  insufficient  nourishment,  he  cannot  do  a  man's 
work,  and  he  does  not,  despite  longer  hours.  The  amount  of 
work  actually  accomplished  by  him  in  from  ten  to  fourteen 
hours  is  about  two-thirds  of  that  accomplished  by  an  American 
workman  in  eight  hours.  At  no  time  is  he  either  willing  or  able 
to  put  forth  his  best  efforts  during  his  work — neither  physically 
nor  mentally.  Of  course,  beside  his  deficiency  in  bodily  strength 
due  to  the  above  cause,  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  bias  about 
him.  He  is  as  a  rule  a  Socialist,  and  on  principle  deems  it  right 
to  give  his  employer  as  little  work  for  the  money  as  possible. 

The  German  workman  lacks  initiative  and  inventiveness. 
Hardly  one  German  workman  to  ten  English  and  fifty  American 
ones  ever  takes  out  a  patent  or  is  credited  with  important  in- 
ventions or  improvements  in  the  machinery  or  tools  he  handles. 
The  contrast  between  him  and  the  American  is  partictilarly 
strong  in  this  line.  The  German  workingman  even  to-day  works 
— and  prefers  to  work — with  inefficient  and  clumsy  too]s,  such 
as  chisels,  planes,  hatchets,  axes,  hammers,  and  very  seldom 
thinks  out  and  then  practically  applies  a  new  and  easier  method 
of  accomplishing  results  of  labour.  He  has  not  the  intuitive 
knack  of  even  the  totally  uncultured  American  toiler  to  do  the 
piece  of  work  in  hand  with  the  smallest  expenditure  of  energy 
attainable. 

Striking  a  general  balance,  then,  the  conditions  under  which 
the  German  manufacturer  or  merchant  lives  must  be  called  at 
least  as  favourable,  if  not  more  so,  as  those  his  American  com- 
petitor has  to  reckon  with.  Everything  considered,  his  taxes 
are  not  as  high  as  those  in  American  cities ;  his  property  is  safer 


io8  GERMANY 

than  property  is  here ;  the  labour  market  provides  him  with  as 
abundant  material  and  at  lower  rates,  though  not  in  such  choice 
and  of  such  high  quality ;  his  rawstuffs  are  obtained  in  part  at 
as  low  prices,  while,  to  be  sure,  for  others  he  has  to  pay  more,  and 
in  some  cases  considerably  more,  than  the  American.  But 
what  about  the  material  out  of  which  the  German  manufacturer 
or  merchant  himself  is  made?  How  does  that  compare  with 
here? 

The  German  manufacturer  or  merchant  of  to-day  is  a  rather 
superior  man  in  some  respects.  In  general  education  he  beats 
his  English  and  his  American  competitor.  He  has  almost  in- 
variably gone  through  a  German  college  first,  and  afterwards 
complemented  his  studies  by  a  three  years'  course  at  an  industrial 
or  technical  high  school,  and  by  extensive  travels  abroad,  keep- 
ing his  eyes  and  his  ears  open  the  while.  Thus  he  is  extremely 
well  equipped  theoretically  when  he  attains  years  of  early 
manhood,  and  he  keeps  this  up  more  or  less  through  life.  He 
is  a  conscientious,  although  seldom  an  intense,  worker  like  the 
American.  He  rarely  enjoys  working  for  his  business  in  the 
same  degree  in  which  the  American  enjoys  it.  Social  demands  on 
his  time  are  much  greater  and  more  exacting  than  they  are  here. 
He  does  not  cultivate  that  spirit  of  intimate  acquaintance  with 
his  employes,  high  or  low,  which  the  American  cultivates ;  in  fact, 
he  cannot  very  well  do  so,  given  the  strong  class  sentiment  which 
still  exists  in  Germany,  and  which  acts  as  an  insuperable  barrier 
between  the  different  classes.  He  is  fairly  enterprising  and 
progressive  in  business,  more  so  than  the  Englishman,  but  in  a 
minor  degree  when  compared  with  the  American.  He  assidu- 
ously keeps  himself  informed  of  all  that  is  going  on  in  his  line  of 
business,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  and  generally  keeps  and 
regularly  reads  at  least  one  English  and  one  French  trade  journal 
in  his  line.  He  risks  his  money  with  greater  ease  than  the 
Englishman,  although  not  with  as  much  as  the  American.  He  is 
eager  for  gain,  and  not  more  scrupulous  than  his  competitors  in 
the  chase  after  the  dollar.  He  plays  a  not  unimportant  part  in 
politics  and  in  public  life  generally,  and  if  not  directly  then  at 
least  indirectly  succeeds  as  a  rule  in  impressing  the  home  govern- 
ment with  his  needs  and  his  wishes,  and  influences  legislation, 
though  again  not  nearly  to  the  same  extent  as  the  American— 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING          log 

in  fact,  hardly  as  much  as  the  Englishman.  Unless  greatly  dis- 
turbing influences  should  prevail  in  German  political  life,  he 
will  gain  greater  influence  upon  the  legislation  of  his  country, 
and  upon  its  diplomatic  relations,  and  it  is  quite  within  the 
possibilities,  even  to  a  certain  extent  probable,  that  he  will  ere 
long  become  the  dominating  factor  in  Germany's  public  life, 
but  as  yet  he  is  not.  Where  in  exceptional  cases  the  German 
manufacturer  or  merchant  possesses  those  characteristics  we 
call  distinctively  American,  viz.,  great  pluck,  indomitable  perse- 
verance, and  bold  initiative,  coupled  with  intense  application 
to  business,  he  succeeds  in  his  country,  despite  the  great  differ- 
ences in  ideas  and  social  structure,  nearly  if  not  quite  as  much 
as  these  characteristics  succeed  here.  Witness  in  illustration 
the  career  of  such  men  as  Baron  Stumm,  the  Krupps,  the 
Siemens,  the  Loewes,  the  Bleichroeders,  Baron  Thiele-Winkler, 
and  others,  who  are  no  mean  parallel  cases  to  our  Morgans, 
Carnegies,  Rockefellers  and  others. 

A  chapter  of  the  special  Imperial  census  taken  throughout 
Germany  in  1895,  and  which  dealt  exclusively  with  the  relative 
numerical  strength  of  the  different  callings,  professions,  trades 
and  avocations  followed  by  the  population,  is  quite  instructive, 
although,  of  course,  the  figures  there  quoted  are  to-day,  after 
seven  years  of  further  rapid  progress,  away  below  the  actual 
mark.  At  that  time  there  were  in  the  empire  no  less  than  296 
large  industrial  enterprises  going,  each  of  them  employing  over 
1,000  persons,  and  together  showing  a  total  of  562,628  employe's, 
and  operated  by  665,265  horsepower.  The  chapter  in  question 
gives  a  wealth  of  details,  and  ten  of  the  largest  ones,  being  typical 
for  special  development  in  certain  directions,  are  critically  ex- 
amined, not  only  so  far  as  their  resources  and  capacity  goes, 
but  also  in  their  influence  upon  the  life  of  the  nation  as  a  whole. 
These  ten  gigantic  establishments  were  those  of  Krupp  in  Essen ; 
the  ship-building  yards  of  the  Vulcan  in  Stettin;  the  Baden 
Aniline  Works  in  Ludwigshaf en ;  the  great  textile  works  of 
Wuensche's  heirs  in  Ebersbach;  the  immense  plant  of  the 
Schultheiss  Brewery  in  Berlin;  the  phenomenal  department 
store  of  A.  Wertheim  in  Berlin;  the  Berlin  Electric  Works;  the 
Hamburg- America  Line  in  Hamburg;  and  the  Deutsche  Bank 
in  Berlin. 


no  GERMANY 

Any  American  wishing  to  study  in  detail  the  modes  and 
methods  in  vogue  in  these  typical  German  establishments,  and 
thus  form  a  comprehensive  and  adequate  conception  not  alone 
of  them,  but  of  German  industry  in  general,  its  points  of 
strength  and  weakness,  cannot  do  better  than  procure — with 
trifling  trouble  and  expense — this  chapter  of  official  and  thor- 
oughly reliable  data. 

But  with  all  this  prosperity  and  commercial  wisdom,  Germany 
has  not  been  able  to  escape  a  period  of  depression  lasting 
now  fully  two  years,  and  whose  full  effects  are  not  likely  to  be 
exhausted  for  some  time  to  come.  It  could  scarcely  be  called 
a  panic.  It  came  at  first  in  driblets,  and  even  after  clear-sighted 
observers  had  cast  the  national  horoscope  in  a  way  to  show  that 
a  period  of  exhaustion  had  set  in,  the  great  masses  did  not  take 
warning.  They  continued,  in  fact,  up  to  the  early  summer  of 
last  year  to  invest,  to  promote,  and  to  organize  new  industrial 
and  financial  ventures  with  nearly  the  same  degree  of  optimism, 
not  to  say  recklessness,  which  had  been  a  chief  trait  in  German 
commercial  development  during  the  five  years  preceding.  It 
is,  indeed,  worth  while  going  a  little  more  closely  into  the  peculiar 
character  of  this  receding  wave  of  German  prosperity.  It 
teaches  an  object  lesson. 

Sober-minded  writers  in  Germany  had  often  pointed  to  the 
United  States  as  an  example  to  avoid.  They  had  pointed  to  the 
kaleidoscopic  changes  in  the  commerce  and  industries  of  this 
country,  its  fat  years  and  lean  years,  the  rising  and  falling  column 
of  our  imports  and  exports,  the  "booms"  and  "panics"  that 
spread  all  over  the  big  Republic — in  a  word,  the  quick  and  sud- 
den shifting  in  the  tide  of  American  national  wealth.  And  then 
these  sober-minded  German  economists  had  gone  on,  for  the  hun- 
dredth time,  holding  this  country  up  as  a  "fearful  example," 
as  the  incarnation  of  "how  not  to  do  it."  Many  have  been  the 
prophetic  warnings  as  to  the  awful  fate  that  was  sure  to  befall 
this  rash  and  venturesome  young  giant.  They  proved  it  mathe- 
matically to  their  own  satisfaction  and  that  of  the  whole  German 
nation.  "The  country  of  millionaires  and  of  beggars,"  they 
called  us,  and  showed  minutely  how  unhealthy  and  abnormal 
was  our  growth  in  all  that  goes — so  far  as  statistics  can  ever 
show  that — to  make  a  nation  more  prosperous.  But  then  came 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING        in 

this  last  decade  of  phenomenal  material  progress  in  Germany 
herself. 

The  rise  was  so  sudden  and  unlooked-for  by  the  nation  at  large, 
nay,  even  by  the  very  men  who  brought  it  about,  that  for  the 
first  two  or  three  years  of  it  the  ruling  sentiment  was  one  of  sur- 
prise, mingled  with  another  and  somewhat  curious  feeling,  a 
feeling  of  apprehension  that  this  rise  was  too  good  to  last.  The 
admirably  correct  and  promptly  issued  Imperial  statistics  were 
studied,  month  after  month,  by  every  business  man  in  Germany 
with  a  dread  that  the  flood  time  must  be  passed,  and  that  the 
figures  must  begin  to  tell  the  disagreeable  story  of  retrogression. 
But  when,  month  after  month  and  year  after  year,  the  barometer 
continued  to  indicate  a  rise,  steady  and  yet  greater  and  greater, 
this  first  sentiment  of  diffidence  began  to  wear  off,  and  by  and 
by  it  was  replaced  by  its  reverse,  by  a  recklessness  and  daring, 
by  a  wild  speculation  in  all  the  values  that  could  be  traded  in  and 
forecast,  and  by  an  absolute  confidence  in  the  permanence  of  the 
"boom"  which  by  this  time  had  percolated  down  to  every  stratum 
of  the  population.  Of  course,  it  would  be  saying  too  much  to 
include  the  whole  nation  in  the  above  statement.  Cool-headed 
men  there  remained,  and  prophets  of  evil  as  well,  just  as  they 
had  remained  with  us  during  every  period  of  excessive  inflation. 
But  the  great  masses  of  the  people,  including  the  great  majority 
of  the  commercial  classes,  were  so  affected. 

Shares  in  every  class  of  industrial  home  enterprises,  even  the 
worst  of  wild-cat  ones,  rose  to  fabulous  heights,  and  found  ready 
takers.  The  bourses  of  Frankfort  and  Berlin  were  swamped 
with  industrial  papers  some  of  which  had  but  a  very  slender 
financial  basis,  and  the  nation  abandoned  its  old  favourites,  the 
government  securities,  which  yielded  but  a  paltry  three  and 
one-half  or  four  per  cent.,  and  bought  shares  in  mining,  elec- 
trical, and  every  other  kind  of  industrial  enterprise,  making 
returns  for  years,  some  of  them,  at  the  rate  of  fifteen,  twenty, 
and  more  per  cent.,  while  these  shares  had  risen  in  the  market 
to  twice,  thrice  or  four  times  their  nominal  values. 

And  at  last  the  great  crash  came.  It  came  otherwise  than  it 
would  have  done  in  most  other  countries — it  came  slowly,  re- 
luctantly. And  there  was  no  panic.  Instead  there  was  desper- 
ate and  stout  resistance  to  what  panicky  feeling  appeared  here 


112 


GERMANY 


and  there.  The  great  financiers  and  banks  of  Germany  reso- 
lutely put  their  backs  to  the  wall  and  fought  catastrophies  inch 
by  inch. 

Yet  what  a  showing  there  was !  Such  a  gigantic  and  foul 
failure  as  that  of  the  Leipziger  Bank  in  Leipsic,  with  its  filial 
institution,  the  Trebertrocknungs  Company  in  Cassel,  occupies 
a  unique  place  in  financial  history.  Here  was  one  of  the  oldest 
and  staidest  banks  of  Germany,  which  for  generations  had  been 
considered,  especially  throughout  Saxony,  as  secure  as  the  Bank 
of  England,  and  which  had  again  and  again  been  the  fiduciary  of 
the  Royal  Saxon  government  itself.  Through  all  the  rapid  rise 
of  Germany's  material  resources  this  bank  had  remained  what 
it  had  been — ultra  conservative,  extremely  cautious  and  set  in 
its  ways — until  a  new  man  got  into  it.  This  man's  sole  claim 
to  consideration  had  been  that  he,  as  a  member  of  the  German 
Merchants'  Commission  which  had  gone  out  to  China  a  few 
years  ago,  had  written  on  his  return  a  pamphlet  filled  with  glitter- 
ing generalities  as  to  the  chances  of  German  trade  with  China 
and  the  far  East.  That  was  all  the  recommendation  and  intro- 
duction he  had  on  entering  the  old  bank.  He  had  not  even  any 
capital  to  invest  in  it.  And  yet  this  man  had  it  all  his  own  way 
in  the  Leipziger  Bank.  Somehow  the  staid  old  gentlemen  there 
had  been  induced  to  look  upon  him  as  a  very  bright  representa- 
tive of  the  new  school  of  German  bankers,  and  in  their  blind 
confidence  in  him  they  permitted  him  to  manipulate  the  funds 
and  the  credit  of  the  bank  in  an  utterly  reckless  and  dishonest 
way. 

They  allowed  him  to  advance  to  the  concern  in  Cassel,  which 
had  virtually  been  bankrupt  ever  since  it  started,  millions  upon 
millions,  and  let  him  strain  the  bank's  credit  to  the  utmost,  un- 
til not  only  the  Cassel  concern  but  the  Leipsic  bank  itself  failed 
with  a  shortage  that  ran  into  the  hundreds  of  millions.  Among 
the  depositors  who  lost  considerable  by  this  failure  was  the 
Saxon  government  and  court,  the  Leipsic  municipal  govern- 
ment, and  scores  of  the  oldest  and  most  respectable  private 
societies.  The  chief  culprit  is  now  serving  a  term  in  jail,  and 
two  of  his  victims  and  fellow  directors  committed  suicide. 

This  was  but  one  of  a  score  of  similar  failures,  nearly  all  show- 
ing a  large  admixture  of  dishonesty,  of  loose  business  methods, 


COMMERCE  AND  MANUFACTURING         113 

of  wild  speculation,  etc.,  although  none  reached  in  magnitude 
or  rascality  the  case  above  described. 

Yet  through  it  all  there  has  been  displayed  by  the  German 
business  world  a  splendid  courage  and  a  calmness  of  judgment 
which  have  done  much  to  retrieve  the  nation's  faults — faults 
bred  by  a  season  of  inflation,  and  which  seem  to  pass  away  in  a 
measure  in  a  season  of  penitence  like  the  present  one.  It  is  a 
wholesome  sign  that  the  press  of  Germany,  both  daily  and 
financial,  has  not  been  afraid  to  speak  out,  but  on  the  contrary 
has  been  reading  many  a  severe  lesson  of  late  to  the  nation, 
among  them  being  this,  that  there  is  no  occasion  hereafter  to 
throw  stones  at  the  English  or  American  merchant,  the  German 
merchant  sitting  himself  in  a  glass  house. 

While  this  period  of  depression  in  Germany  is  not  yet  com- 
pletely over,  there  are  already  signs  of  recovery.  A  pretty 
thorough  and  extensive  reform  has  been  wrought  in  German 
business  circles,  and  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  present  de- 
pression itself,  viz.,  the  artificial  creation  of  companies  entrusted 
with  the  task  of  inducing  cities,  towns,  and  private  concerns 
to  use  electric  motive  or  lighting  power,  even  in  cases  where  such 
advanced  methods  are  intrinsically  needless,  and  were  going  far 
in  advance  of  present  requirements,  merely  in  order  to  find 
employment  for  capital,  seems  to  be  undergoing  a  process  of 
extirpation. 

In  any  event,  despite  the  set-back  which  came  temporarily 
to  German  industry  and  commerce,  the  figures  for  her  trade  last 
year  and  this  present  one  show  scarcely  any  abatement  in  her 
upward  movement.  For  1901  there  is  still  a  total  exceeding  the 
$2,500,000,000  mark,  the  decrease  all  told  amounting  to  but 
f-'f  40, 000,000  for  exports  and  imports  combined,  and  there  has 
been  this  present  year  again  a  slight  upward  movement.  In- 
deed, it  looks  as  if  her  imports  and  exports  this  year  will  be  some- 
what larger  than  ever.  The  figures  for  her  iron  and  steel  pro- 
duction in  1900  show  a  similar  tendency.  In  iron  Germany  pro- 
duced last  year  8,520,390  tons,  as  against  England's  8,959,691, 
and  this  country's  15,878,354;  and  of  steel  she  produced  6,394,222 
tons,  as  against  England's  4,850,000,  and  against  this  country's 
13,369,613  tons. 

This  period  of  depression  is  tantamount  to  a  rather  severe 


ii4  GERMANY 

castigation  of  the  German  people  for  losing  temporarily  their 
mental  and  moral  balance  under  a  strong  and  honeyed  dose  of 
rapid  prosperity.  But  it  evidently  has  not  seriously  checked 
the  nation's  progress  in  the  path  of  commercial  advance. 


CHAPTER  IX 

KRUPP    AND    SIEMENS 

EMINENTLY  illustrative  of  the  high  degree  of  industrial  effi- 
ciency which  contemporaneous  Germany  has  attained,  are  the 
two  mammoth  firms  of  Fried.  Krupp  and  Siemens  &  Halske, 
firms  which  have  achieved  a  world-wide  reputation  and  whose 
growth  and  present  capacity  are  the  distinctive  outcome  of  those 
characteristics  of  the  modern  German  by  which  he  has  climbed 
to  his  enviable  position  of  to-day,  viz.,  persistence,  enterprise 
coupled  with  caution,  scientific  and  thorough  methods  applied 
to  technical  pursuits,  and  infinite  painstaking  in  the  mechanical 
execution  of  his  work. 

There  are,  as  briefly  referred  to  elsewhere,  a  number  of  other 
giant  establishments  in  the  Germany  of  to-day,  all  of  which 
exhibit  the  same  characteristics,  and  a  brief  history  of  which 
might  be  fully  as  interesting  and  to  the  point  as  the  above  two. 
Inasmuch,  though,  as  the  two  named  are  best  known  on  this 
side  of  the  water,  they  have  here  been  selected  for  the  purpose. 

The  firm  of  Fried.  Krupp  is  now  nearly  a  century  in  existence, 
having  been  founded  in  1810  by  Peter  Friedrich  Krupp  in  Essen, 
then  a  small  place  unknown  beyond  a  radius  of  a  few  miles. 
Its  beginnings  were  extremely  humble,  and  though  the  first 
smelting  furnace  for  the  manufacture  of  cast  steel  was  already 
built  in  1811,  and  the  first  workshops  were  constructed  in  1818, 
it  was  not  until  1843  that  the  first  application  of  cast  steel  to 
small  arms  barrels  was  made,  and  only  in  1847  that  the  first 
finished  gun,  a  three-pounder,  entirely  made  of  cast  steel,  was 
turned  out.  The  first  universal  exposition,  the  one  of  1851,  held 
in  London,  gave  the  firm  the  long-coveted  opportunity  of  at- 
tracting the  attention  of  the  world  to  this  new  and  path-breaking 
industry.  The  exhibits  made  there  by  Krupp  accomplished 
that  purpose,  and  henceforth,  with  orders  coming  in  from  foreign 
countries,  progress  was  rapid. 

"5 


n6  GERMANY 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  founder  of  the  firm  had  died,  in  1826, 
of  a  broken  heart,  at  the  early  age  of  thirty-nine,  having  sunk 
his  entire  slender  fortune  in  these  early  and  experimental  days  of 
the  firm.  His  ill  star  had  willed  it  that  his  time  was  one  of  pro- 
found peace,  when  there  was  no  call  for  arms,  good  or  bad,  and 
when  Prussia's  slumbering  ambition  had  not  yet  made  the  reor- 
ganization and  new  equipment  of  her  army  a  watchword.  His 
son,  Alfred,  born  in  1812,  and  early  matured  in  the  school  of 
adversity,  bravely  continued  his  father's  work.  The  small  cot- 
tage in  which  Alfred  was  born,  and  in  which  his  father  had  known 
much  care  and  sorrow,  still  stands  to  this  day,  in  the  very  heart 
of  the  present  giant  works,  as  a  memento  of  the  humble  origin 
of  the  family.  Alfred  Krupp,  who  died  himself  in  1887,  left 
testamentary  provisions  to  keep  this  tiny  cradle  of  his  race  intact. 

It  was  in  1848  that  he  had  taken  over  the  works  as  sole  pro- 
prietor, and  in  1853,  two  years  after  the  London  Exposition, 
he  took  out  his  famous  patent  for  the  making  of  weldless  steel 
tires,  and  in  the  next  year  constructed  his  first  twelve-pounder 
gun.  In  1861  he  started  his  fifty-ton  hammer,  "Fritz,"  at  that 
time  a  marvel,  to  work,  and  made  in  the  succeeding  year  his 
flat -wedge  breech-closing  arrangement,  which  was  soon  followed 
by  the  round-wedge  one.  In  1864  the  rail  and  plate  mills  were 
erected,  and  in  1867  he  introduced  prismatic  powder  with  seven 
perforations,  and  adopted  the  ring  construction  for  larger  guns. 
In  1886  he  incorporated  the  existing  great  steel  works  at  Annen 
with  his  own,  and  his  son  and  successor,  Friedrich  Krupp — the 
present  owner  and  head  of  the  firm — has  since  then  done  much 
to  enlarge  the  works,  its  field  of  operations,  and  to  improve 
methods.  In  1889  he  introduced  smokeless  powder  and  the 
horizontal  breech-closing  arrangement  for  quick-firing  guns; 
started  in  1890  the  manufacture  of  armour  plate,  using  newly 
built  2,000  and  5,000  ton  hydraulic  forging  presses  for  the  pur- 
pose, and  purchased  in  1893  the  existing  Gruson  Works,  near 
Magdeburg,  and  in  1896  the  Germania  Shipyards  in  Kiel  and 
Berlin.  By  the  census  of  1900,  the  firm  employs  nearly  50,000 
all  told,  and  this  figure  has  since  been  exceeded.  The  Germania 
shipyards  in  Kiel  and  Berlin,  in  1898  with  a  force  of  2,651,  have 
now  more  than  doubled  this  number.  The  firm  owns,  besides 
its  main  works  in  Essen,  whose  working  army  totals  30,000,  and 


KRUPP   AND    SIEMENS  117 

besides  the  works  in  Annen  and  the  Gruson  works  and  the 
Germania  yards,  four  other  gigantic  blast  furnace  plants  at 
Rheinhausen,  Duisburg,  Neuwied  and  Engers,  and  also  big  iron 
works,  foundry  and  engineering  works  near  Sayii — all  lying  close 
to  the  original  establishment.  It  moreover  owns  large  coal  and 
iron  mines  in  Germany,  and  likewise  iron  mines  producing  ore  of 
exceptional  quality  at  Bilbao,  Spain;  also  a  number  of  quarries, 
clay  and  sand  pits,  and  three  large  sea-going  steamers.  The 
Krupp  proving  grounds  near  Meppen,  Prussia,  of  a  length  of  ten 
miles,  and  with  further  facilities  for  firing  to  a  distance  of  fifteen 
miles,  is  a  unique  feature  in  itself,  of  the  greatest  interest  to  all 
army  and  navy  men  the  world  over. 

The  present  owner  is  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  largest  income 
within  the  German  empire,  paying  an  income  tax  on  clear  annual 
profits  of  close  on  to  $4,000,000.  He  has  refused,  on  repeated 
occasions,  all  titles  of  nobility  and  other  distinctions  of  a  similar 
kind,  preferring  to  remain  plain  Herr  Krupp.  But  he  has  seen 
the  Kaiser  and  a  score  of  other  crowned  heads  as  guests  under 
his  roof,  in  his  splendid  estate  of  Villa  Huegel,  near  Essen, 
and  has  dispensed  a  lavish  and  tasteful  hospitality  on  these  and 
many  other  occasions. 

The  oldest  specialty  of  the  Krupp  works  was  the  production 
of  crucible  steel — that  is,  of  steel  made  by  melting  together,  in 
closed  crucibles,  iron  and  steel  specially  produced  for  this  pur- 
pose, which  is  poured  from  these  crucibles  into  ingot  moulds, 
the  largest  blocks  thus  made  weighing  about  ninety  tons.  It 
was  a  block  of  this  crucible  steel,  faultless  in  the  minutest 
particular,  which  first  attracted  the  attention  of  experts  at  the 
London  Exposition  of  1851  to  the  then  unknown  German 
manufacturer. 

In  this  process  only  the  best  raw  material  is  used,  all  taken 
from  the  firm's  mines.  The  ingots  and  blooms  thus  obtained  are 
absolutely  homogeneous,  close-grained  and  uniform  throughout. 
Such  reliability  cannot  be  obtained  by  any  other  method  of 
steel  production.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  this  type  of  steel 
is  used  for  all  purposes  where  reliability  is  of  the  first  importance, 
especially  for  guns,  rifle  barrels,  and  armour-piercing  shells,  also 
for  the  more  important  structural  parts  of  locomotives,  steam 
engines,  marine  engines,  hoisting  machinery,  for  tool  steel  and 


GERMANY 

spring  steel,  tires  and  axles  for  locomotives,  tenders  and  cars, 
dies  of  various  kinds,  etc.,  and  for  all  such  machinery  parts  where 
a  minimum  of  wear  and  tear  is  desirable,  and  which  demand  the 
greatest  possible  safety  against  breakage.  The  Martin-Siemens 
(or  open-hearth)  steel  produced  at  these  works  is  generally  used 
for  similar  purposes  as  crucible  steel,  with  the  exception  of  guns. 
The  last-named  steel  is  also  much  used  in  fashioning  steel  parts 
of  ships. 

Puddled  steel  is  also  produced  in  enormous  quantities,  and 
while  mainly  used  as  raw  material  for  crucible  steel,  there  is  a 
great  demand  for  it  abroad,  where  it  is  sold  under  the  name  of 
Milano  and  Bamboo  steel  for  the  manufacture  of  tools.  The 
Bessemer  steel  turned  out  in  large  quantities  is  especially  em- 
ployed in  railroad  building,  such  as  for  rails,  fish-plates,  sleepers, 
etc.  Besides  the  grades  of  steel  mentioned,  alloys  of  steel,  with 
nickel,  chrome,  manganese,  tungsten,  molybdenum,  etc.,  are 
produced  for  particular  purposes.  Of  these  alloys,  nickel  steel 
is  by  far  the  most  important,  being  considered  the  ideal  metal 
for  all  constructions.  It  shows  not  only  higher  qualities  in  the 
tension  tests  than  the  best  cast-steel,  but  possesses  that  extreme 
toughness  formerly  only  obtained  in  the  sinewy  wrought  iron. 
It  is  as  tough  as  leather.  Krupp  has  improved  on  the  methods 
of  production,  so  that  his  nickel  steel  has  a  tensile  strength  and 
an  elastic  limit  of  92,500  and  62,600  pounds,  respectively,  per 
square  inch,  which  considerably  overtops  any  other  record. 

This  nickel  steel  makes  incontestably  the  best  material  for 
ships'  main  shafts,  and  for  all  such  parts  of  machinery  as  are 
obliged  to  withstand  extraordinary  strain  and  yet  must  be  made 
absolutely  secure  against  the  possibility  of  sudden  fracture. 
Crank  shafts  weighing  up  to  fifty  tons  and  intended  for  large 
steamers  are  turned  out  at  the  Krupp  works.  The  only  item 
telling  against  a  more  extensive  use  of  nickel  steel  for  all  structural 
purposes  than  at  present  obtains  is  its  vastly  increased  price. 

However,  the  chief  article  made  of  nickel  steel  at  the  Krupp 
works  is  armour  plate.  Krupp  sold  his  patent  rights  to  both 
this  country  and  England,  while  he  is  working  at  more  than 
full  capacity  in  manufacturing  plate  of  this  nickel  steel  for  the 
German  navy,  for  a  number  of  foreign  navies,  including  the 
Russian,  and  for  private  customers.  For  the  German  navy 


KRUPP   AND   SIEMENS  119 

alone  scores  of  thousands  of  tons  of  this  best  of  all  armour  plate 
will  be  made  by  him  between  this  and  1908.  The  5,ooo-ton 
hydraulic  press  and  the  smaller  ones  of  2,000  tons  each  are  at 
work  on  these  plates.  All  the  tool  machines  used  in  their  mak- 
ing are  driven  by  separate  electric  motors.  When  the  plates 
made  here  are  ready  for  reception,  careful  tests  show  that, 
superior  to  the  product  of  former  years,  their  face  is  absolutely 
invulnerable  to  the  hardest  steel  tools.  This  layer  of  hardened 
steel  reaches  to  about  an  inch  under  the  surface,  and  thence  very 
gradually  changes  to  the  original  material,  a  soft,  tough  nickel 
steel  of  extraordinary  resistance.  This  excellent  quality  of  the 
plate  is  the  result  of  the  treatment  it  undergoes  after  being 
rolled,  a  treatment  which  has  been  developed  at  Krupp's  during 
these  last  ten  years  and  put  into  practice  by  marvelous  novel 
appurtenances.  No  modern  armour-piercing  shell  can  drive  its 
point  through  the  skin,  hard  as  flint,  of  these  plates,  and  the 
fragments  of  projectiles  fired  against  such  plates  show  that  their 
heads  have  been  completely  flattened.  It  is  a  question  of  the 
energy  saved  in  the  body  of  the  projectile  after  such  action 
whether  it  may  still  be  able  to  punch  a  hole  into  the  plate  in  the 
way  a  punching  machine  will.  At  any  rate,  the  upsetting  and 
flattening  of  the  shell's  head  consumes  a  very  considerable  part 
of  its  energy  and  changes  it  into  heat,  and  this  explains  why 
these  plates  offer  a  resistance  equal  to  that  of  common  steel 
plates  twice  their  thickness,  or  of  wrought  iron  armour  thrice 
their  thickness.  Besides,  each  plate  as  a  whole  possesses,  like 
leather,  a  toughness  in  consequence  of  which  even  a  number  of 
hits  close  together  fail  to  crack  or  break  it.  With  such  results 
it  is  easily  understood  what  extraordinary  reduction  in  the  dead 
weight  of  armourclads  is  obtained  by  the  use  of  this  latest 
product  of  armour  plate  manufacture. 

But  Krupp  is  popularly  known  as  the  "Gun  King,"  and  the 
making  of  guns  is  even  now  his  main  business.  Up  to  the  present 
he  has  sold  over  50,000  of  them,  from  the  smallest  quick-firing 
guns  of  two-inch  calibre  up  to  the  largest  turret  guns  of  twelve- 
inch  calibre  and  over,  coast  guns  (up  to  fifteen  inches  in  calibre) 
siege  and  fortress  guns,  field  and  mountain  artillery,  especially 
the  quick-firing  varieties.  He  turns  out  complete  batteries 
including  their  accessories  and  ammunition,  projectiles  of  every 


120  GERMANY 

kind,  such  as  armour-piercing  and  half-armour-piercing  shells, 
common  steel  shells,  mining  shells,  high  explosive  shells,  steel 
shells,  common  cast-iron  shells,  case  shot,  fuses  and  ammunition 
ready  for  use,  and  also  rifle  barrels.  The  manufacture  of  war 
material  is  not  confined  to  the  Essen  works.  At  the  Gruson 
works  Krupp  turns  out,  as  a  specialty,  armoured  turrets, 
chilled  cast-iron  armour  for  coast  and  inland  fortifications, 
gun  carriages  of  special  construction,  etc. 

At  Essen  and  at  the  other  establishments  along  the  Ruhr  and 
Rhine,  Krupp  manufactures,  besides,  railroad  material  of  every 
description,  ship-building  material,  such  as  plates,  stems,  stern 
posts,  cylinders,  piston  rods,  crank  shafts,  and  many  other  things 
that  enter  into  the  construction  of  a  vessel ;  parts  of  machinery 
of  all  descriptions  rough  or  finished;  sheet  steel  and  sheet  iron, 
from  the  thinnest  to  a  thickness  of  over  thirteen  feet ;  rolls  of  hard 
steel  for  plate-rolling  mills,  and  also  hardened  rolls  for  rolling 
gold  and  silver;  tool  steel,  files,  rock  drill  steel,  steel  in  bars  for 
all  industrial  purposes,  and  many  other  objects.  A  rudder  frame 
of  cast-steel,  twenty-six  feet  high,  and  weighing  over  eleven 
tons,  is  among  the  sights  just  now  at  his  Essen  works  of  special 
interest  to  an  expert.  Altogether,  the  works  at  Essen  alone 
comprise  the  following  shops,  viz.: 

Two  Bessemer  steel  works  (fifteen  converters),  four  Martin 
steel  works,  two  steel  foundries,  puddling  works,  welding  shops, 
foundry  for  crucible  steel,  iron  foundry,  projectile  foundry,  brass 
foundry,  two  annealing  shops,  hardening  shop,  crucible  shop, 
rail  mill,  plate  mill,  rolling  mill  for  fish-plates,  etc.,  spring  shop, 
hydraulic  presses  and  armour  plate  mill,  hammer  shop,  wheel 
forge,  hearth  forge,  horseshoe  forge,  tire  rolling-mill,  turning 
shop  for  wheels  and  axles,  boiler  shop,  shop  for  portable  railway 
material,  machine  shop  i,  file  factory,  four  repairing  shops, 
repairing  shop  for  railways. 

Next,  the  ordnance  works,  consisting  of:  Machine  shops  2  to 
4,  gun  shops  i  to  6,  emery  shop,  boring  shop,  hoop  shop,  fuse 
shop,  burnishing  department,  gun  inspection  department,  gun 
carriage  shed,  gun  carriage  shops  i  and  2,  limber  workshop,  forge 
for  gun  shops,  galvanizing  and  pressing  shops,  engravers'  shop, 
laboratory  workshop,  nickel-plating  shop,  tool  store,  projectile 
turning  shop,  smithy  for  projectile  turning,  lead  melting  shop, 


KRUPP   AND    SIEMENS  121 

projectile  inspection  department,  gun  store,  packing  shed,  straw 
rope  manufacturing  shop,  proof  butts;  and  test  house,  chemical 
laboratories,  carpenters',  tinsmiths',  builders',  joiners',  cart- 
wrights',  painters',  mortar  shops,  saw  mills,  saddlers'  shops, 
tailor's  shop,  electrical  plant,  steam  producing  plant,  gas  works, 
water  works,  fire  department,  shops  for  telegraphs,  telephones, 
lithographic  and  photographic  institutions,  cooking  plant,  and 
so  forth. 

An  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  the  whole  establishment  may  be 
obtained  when  it  is  mentioned  that  the  coal  and  coke  consumed 
is  now  about  1,500,000  tons  per  annum;  that  the  water  con- 
sumed is  about  9,000,000  tons,  or  as  much  as  a  city  of  half  a 
million  would  use;  that  the  gas  consumed  for  lighting  purposes 
alone  is  over  500,000,000  cubic  feet,  and  that  the  plant  for  elec- 
tric light  includes  over  2,500  incandescent  lamps  and  700  arc 
lamps. 

One  particular  feature  of  the  whole  cluster  of  Krupp  enter- 
prises deserves  special  and  more  than  passing  mention.  It  is 
that  which  explains  in  large  part  the  prodigious  and  unbroken 
success  of  the  firm,  and  furnishes  the  key  to  its  steady  policy 
as  an  employer  of  vast  bodies  of  workmen.  All  over  Germany 
the  mechanic's  and  laborer's  dearest  wish  is  to  be  inscribed  on 
the  Krupp  pay-roll.  This  is  not  so  much  caused  by  the  high 
rate  of  pay  in  vogue  there,  but  rather  by  the  admirable  and 
minute  manner  in  which  the  firm  takes  care  of  its  employe's  of 
every  grade,  from  the  humblest  to  the  highest-priced  There 
are  some  high  officials  in  Krupp 's  pay — former  colonels  of  the 
regular  German  army  artillery,  for  instance — whose  salary  and 
emoluments  rise  into  the  scores  of  thousands  every  year,  and 
there  are  others,  humble  puddlers  or  stokers,  who  earn  but  a 
modest  couple  of  marks  per  diem.  But  they  all  share  in  propor- 
tion in  the  far-sighted  arrangements  made  by  the  firm  to  shield 
all  the  employe's  against  the  reverses  of  fortune — prolonged  ill- 
ness, incapacitation  for  toil,  accidents  of  a  serious  nature,  death, 
invalidity,  the  feebleness  of  old  age,  the  lack  of  provision  for 
widows,  orphans,  aged  parents,  etc.  There  is  no  possibility 
whatever  in  the  line  of  adversity  that  has  not  been  discounted 
in  advance  by  the  firm  and  its  benevolent  or  semi-benevolent 
institutions,  so  that  a  toiler  of  common  fibre,  as  well  as  a  skilled 


122  GERMANY 

and  brainy  technician,  on  entering  the  service  of  the  firm  has  the 
moral  certainty  of  being  well  and  even  tenderly  taken  care  of  for 
the  rest  of  his  natural  life,  and  that  this  care  will  apply  after  his 
death  to  his  loved  ones — always  providing,  of  course,  that  his 
behaviour  is  what  may  be  reasonably  expected,  and  that  his  ser- 
vices last  for  longer  than  a  short  spell. 

It  would  require  a  good-sized  volume  to  describe  in  detail 
these  institutions  and  provisions  and  their  genesis,  and,  indeed, 
books  have  been  written  on  this  subject  ere  now.  Space,  how- 
ever, will  permit  of  but  a  cursory  glance  at  the  whole  interesting 
topic,  a  topic  of  transcendent  interest  to  all  large  employers  the 
world  over,  for  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  has  been  owing 
chiefly  if  not  solely  to  this  comprehensive  care  taken  of  the  work- 
men that  such  a  thing  as  a  strike  or  even  a  threat  of  one  has  never 
troubled  the  firm  in  the  long  history  of  its  existence,  and  this 
despite  the  greatest  efforts  made  on  many  occasions  by  labour 
agitators  and  by  the  entire  Socialist  press  of  Germany  to  foment 
dissatisfaction  and  precipitate  strikes.  The  relations  between 
the  Krupps  and  their  hosts  of  toilers  have  remained  unvaryingly 
cordial  and  intimate,  differing  in  this  respect  enormously  from 
those  commonly  obtaining  in  the  empire  between  the  wealthy 
employer  and  his  men. 

To  quickly  run  over  this  chain  of  institutions  specially  created 
by  the  Krupps  (in  the  course  of  three  generations),  it  must  be 
mentioned  that  they  consist  of  seventy-three  supply  stores,  of 
of  which  fifty-one  are  in  Essen  and  the  surrounding  colonies  and 
twenty-two  at  the  other  works;  two  slaughter  houses,  one  ice 
factory,  one  brush  maker's  shop,  one  paper  bag  factory,  two 
tailors'  workshops,  one  shoe  maker's  shop,  one  hotel,  one  club, 
seven  refreshment  houses,  two  cafe's,  one  laundry,  one  industrial 
school  for  adults,  three  ditto  for  school  children,  one  household 
training-school,  two  infirmaries,  barrack  hospitals  for  epidemics, 
workmen's  barracks,  dining-rooms  for  workmen,  lodgings  for  un- 
married superior  workmen,  and  the  dwelling-house  colonies  for 
his  workmen  at  Baumhof,  Westend,  Cronenberg,  Schederhof, 
Alfredshof  (all  within  or  near  the  confines  of  Essen),  and  the 
Altenhof,  a  pretty  colony  for  invalid  and  retired  workmen. 

On  the  erection  of  these  various  workmen's  colonies  above 
enumerated  the  firm  has  laid  out  altogether  a  sum  aggregating 


KRUPP   AND    SIEMENS  123 

considerably  over  three  million  dollars,  yielding  interest  of  be- 
tween i  1-2  and  2  per  cent,  only,  and  in  the  planning  of  buildings 
and  the  choice  and  embellishment  of  sites  for  this  purpose  the 
unflagging  practice  has  been  one  of  steady  improvement.  The 
first  colonies  of  Baumhof  and  Westend  were  nothing  better  than 
closely  packed  tenements,  plain  and  unpretentious  exteriorly 
and  interiorly,  though  provided  with  every  hygienic  device  and 
kept  scrupulously  neat  and  in  good  repair.  The  later  colonies, 
Cronenberg,  Alfredhof,  and  Schederhof,  are  far  better  in  every 
respect — laid  out  with  gardens,  the  streets  wide  and  lined  with 
trees,  and  the  houses  themselves  largely  on  the  cottage  and 
one-family  plan,  avoiding  that  uniformity  and  sameness  which 
characterized  the  earlier  efforts  in  this  line. 

At  the  stores  the  employes  obtain  every  species  of  goods  and 
provisions  at  the  wholesale  cost  price,  but  strictly  on  a  cash  basis. 
Of  late  years  the  firm  has  successfully  inaugurated  the  system  of 
enabling  its  workmen  to  purchase  their  own  houses  on  ground 
belonging  to  the  Krupps,  about  a  thousand  such  houses  being 
now  in  such  hands.  This  policy  was  persistently  frowned  upon 
by  the  late  Alfred  Krupp,  he  fearing  all  sorts  of  unpleasant  com- 
plications, but  the  present  owner  has  broken  with  this,  and  by 
exercising  reasonable  caution  has  avoided  these  dreaded  con- 
sequences. 

Of  course,  the  firm  has  to  conform,  like  every  other  in  Germany, 
with  the  provisions  of  the  Imperial  Workmen's  Insurance  Law, 
which,  as  elsewhere  stated,  yields  the  sick,  aged  or  incapacitated 
toiler  a  minimum  of  financial  security.  But  its  own  policy  in 
this  respect,  antedating  that  of  the  empire  by  half  a  century, 
is  far  more  comprehensive  and  generous  in  scope.  The  firm 
pays,  under  the  imperial  law,  a  matter  of  half  a  million  marks, 
or  about  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  annually 
into  the  public  treasury  for  this  purpose.  But  its  own  exclusive 
and  voluntary  provisions  demand  an  annual  outlay  of  about  six 
times  that  sum,  divided  and  subdivided  into  sums  large  and 
small,  so  as  to  fit  the  exact  needs  of  every  case.  These  various 
institutions  are  constantly  added  to  by  the  present  owner,  who 
on  one  special  occasion  donated  no  less  than  one  million  marks, 
or  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars,  to  one  single 
fund  alone,  and  who  has  lately  enlarged  the  Altenhof  colony, 


124  GERMANY 

built  invalid  and  convalescent  homes,  erected  a  new  workmen's 
colony  (the  finest  and  most  homelike  of  all)  in  memory  of  his 
father,  and  constructed  a  score  of  other  buildings  for  special 
benevolent  purposes  besides. 

Nevertheless,  the  consistent  policy  pursued  by  him  as  by  his 
father  before  him,  is  to  rob  all  these  institutions  as  far  as  may  be 
of  their  purely  eleemosynary  character,  and  to  exact  a  certain 
cash  payment,  no  matter  how  small,  for  the  enjoyment  of  the 
rights  and  benefits  of  all  these  institutions,  excepting  a  very  few 
where  the  case  absolutely  required  it,  as  in  the  Altenhof,  for  in- 
stance. By  thus  enlisting  the  cooperation  of  his  men  for  the 
financial  support  of  these  institutions,  he  has  served  two  very 
important  ends.  He  has  conserved  the  sense  of  self-respect  of 
his  employe's,  and  he  has  made  them  feel  a  far  greater  interest  in 
their  success  and  proper  management  than  if  they  were  supported 
solely  out  of  his  own  pocket. 

The  firm's  care,  however,  did  not  end  with  the  common  grade 
of  toiler  in  its  employ,  but  extends  likewise  to  its  salaried  officials. 
There  are  a  number  of  funds  that  were  specially  created  for  that 
purpose,  such  as  compulsory  life  insurance,  sick  and  accidental 
insurance  benefits,  etc.,  and  the  cooperation  of  this  higher  and 
highest  class  of  employe's  is  insured  by  the  signing  of  a  contract 
on  entering  the  service  of  the  firm,  whereby  a  small  percentage 
of  the  salaries  is  deducted  each  pay-day,  the  firm  contributing  as 
much  or  more  towards  the  fund  thus  created. 

A  special  colony  for  this  class  of  well-paid  employe's  has  also 
been  built,  forming  a  beautiful  thoroughfare  in  Essen  called 
Hohenzollern  Strasse,  each  house  being  surrounded  by  a  pretty 
garden,  constructed  after  special  plans  of  the  firm's  architects, 
and  presenting  a  very  handsome  appearance  in  every  case.  The 
rents  charged  for  these  houses  also  represent  about  two  per  cent, 
on  the  investment.  A  very  fine  and  well-appointed  club  house 
has  also  been  built  by  the  firm  for  these  high-grade  employe's, 
and  likewise  a  theatre  and  other  resorts. 

In  carrying  out  such  an  extensive  benefit  scheme  for  its  em- 
ploye's of  every  class,  the  largest  possible  opportunity  was  pre- 
sented of  testing  practically  a  number  of  mooted  questions  and 
of  trying  all  sorts  of  benevolent  and  humane  experiments.  One 
of  these  is  a  system  of  premiums,  awarded  in  proportion  to  the 


KRUPP    AND    SIEMENS  125 

industry,  fidelity  to  duty,  and  intelligence  shown  by  individual 
workmen  in  their  allotted  fields  of  labour.  The  system  has,  on  the 
whole,  worked  very  satisfactorily.  Another  has  been  the  regular 
distribution  on  special  occasions — such  as  the  end  of  a  strenuous 
campaign  for  the  purpose  of  finishing  an  important  and  remuner- 
ative piece  of  contract  work  within  a  certain  specified  time  and 
of  a  certain  specified  quality — of  a  portion  of  the  profits  accruing 
to  the  firm,  a  portion  determined  beforehand.  This  has  also 
produced  very  favourable  results,  in  spite  of  many  predictions  to 
the  contrary,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  elsewhere  in  German 
establishments  of  some  magnitude  the  experiment  had  miscarried. 
In  short,  various  incentives,  rarely  afforded  the  common  work- 
man elsewhere  in  the  empire  to  intenser  and  more  thoughtful 
work,  have  been  held  out  by  Krupp  to  his  men,  and  in  almost 
every  instance  with  good  results. 

To  actively  aid  in  rendering  the  homes  of  his  men  more  home- 
like, arid  in  making  their  family  life  more  harmonious,  purer, 
and  more  comfortable  than  is  the  case  in  most  of  the  homes  of  the 
industrial  toiler,  has  been  another  ambition  of  this  remarkable 
firm,  and  in  this,  too,  the  success  attained  has  been  far  greater 
than  the  firm  itself  had  dared  to  hope  for  in  the  beginning.  The 
industrial  and  the  household  and  cooking  schools  in  which  the 
wives,  daughters  and  sisters  of  the  employe's  are  trained  under 
competent  instruction  have  been  a  great  boon  in  this  respect. 
Instruction  in  every  department  of  domestic  work,  in  sewing, 
embroidery,  in  mending  and  dressmaking,  in  millinery  and  other 
advanced  female  art,  is  regularly  imparted  with  excellent  result, 
and  in  this  as  well  as  in  the  training  of  nurses,  in  kitchen  and 
bakery  work,  the  wife  of  the  present  owner,  a  niece  of  one  of  the 
Kaiser's  favorites,  General  von  Ende,  has  all  along  been  taking 
an  active  and  intelligent  interest,  so  much  so  that  the  Empress, 
on  a  recent  visit,  declared  this  part  of  the  firm's  humane  en- 
deavors a  model  for  all  industrial  employers  in  Germany. 

In  fine,  the  brutish,  grossly  sensual  and  spendthrift  manner  in 
which  the  average  industrial  toiler  lives  and  has  his  being  in  most 
of  the  towns  of  the  empire  that  are  given  over  principally  to 
manufacturing  has  been  greatly  modified  for  the  better  by  these 
systematic  efforts  of  the  firm  to  foster  the  purely  human  in- 
stincts of  its  army  of  workers.  In  this  respect,  in  fact,  the  Krupp 


126  GERMANY 

establishment  presents  a  contrast  with  similar  establishments 
in  Germany  which  is  as  striking  as  it  is  satisfying,  and  which 
seems  to  give  the  lie  to  those  in  Germany's  high  councils  who 
maintain  that  nothing  but  force  and  severity  will  answer  with 
the  labouring  man.  It  is,  perhaps,  in  teaching  this  lesson  that  the 
Krupp  establishment  is  most  remarkable  of  all,  although  to  the 
world  at  large  its  chief  claim  to  distinction  lies  in  the  fact  of  hav- 
ing been  the  pioneer  in  that  vast  and  all-important  field  of  a 
highly  developed  and  technically  perfected  steel  industry,  an 
industry  which  as  a  matter  of  fact  lies  at  the  root  of  modern 
economic  progress,  and  which  made  its  triumphs  and  successes 
possible,  and  furthermore  in  having  carried  this  industry  to  the 
furthest  present  limits. 

In  another  though  in  some  respects  allied  field  of  human  ac- 
tivity, the  brothers  Siemens,  pioneers  like  the  Krupps,  and  like 
them,  too,  eminently  successful,  may  stand  as  the  highest  type 
of  German  industry  where  industry  comes  closest  to  art  and 
science.  Their  rise,  growth  and  triumph  would  likewise  fur- 
nish plenty  of  material  for  a  book  of  all-absorbing  interest,  but 
for  present  purposes  it  will  suffice  to  sketch  the  bare  outlines  of 
the  life  of  this  firm. 

It  consists  to-day  of  three  allied  establishments — the  parent 
one  at  Berlin,  under  the  firm  name  of  Siemens  &  Halske,  with 
large  works  in  Germany  and  Austria;  the  London  house,  Siemens 
Brothers  &  Co.,  and  the  St.  Petersburg  house,  likewise  called 
Siemens  Brothers.  Together  they  have  at  present  19,000  em- 
ploy 6s,  of  whom  4,000  are  officials,  engineers,  scientists,  and 
technicians,  and  15,000  are  workmen,  mechanics,  etc.  The 
three  brothers,  Werner,  Carl,  and  William,  have  done  more  than 
anybody  else  in  developing  the  field  of  electrotechnics  in  its  prac- 
tical application  to  the  needs  of  the  race. 

The  firm  was  founded  on  October  12,  1847,  by  the  artillery 
lieutenant,  Werner  Siemens,  associating  himself  with  the  me- 
chanical engineer,  J.  G.  Halske,  both  in  Berlin.  Of  the  two, 
however,  it  was  Siemens  who  had  by  far  the  best  scientific  equip- 
ment, and  who  was  possessed  of  a  daring  inventiveness  and  a 
marvelous  power  of  utilizing  resources  and  entering  hitherto 
untried  spheres  of  activity.  Halske  was  a  man  of  no  initiative, 
timid,  and  of  narrow  horizon,  and  when  the  first  great  inter- 


KRUPP   AND   SIEMENS  127 

national  successes  came  to  the  young  firm,  and  its  range  of  view 
and  its  financial  enterprises  extended  beyond  the  limits  he 
was  able  to  grasp,  he  withdrew  and  left  Werner  Siemens  with 
his  two  younger  brothers  in  sole  possession  of  the  field. 

Werner  Siemens  and  his  partner  began  with  a  borrowed 
capital  of  6,000  thalers,  or  about  $4,200,  and  began  the  manu- 
facture in  Berlin,  on  a  small  scale,  of  the  needle  telegraph,  which 
Werner  technically  improved.  During  the  Prusso- Danish  war 
of  1848  he  laid  the  first  submarine  mines  in  the  harbour  of  Kiel 
and  in  the  Rhine  near  Cologne,  following  this  up  with  sub- 
marine cables  for  telegraphy,  the  first-ever  laid.  In  1849  he  con- 
structed the  first  long  telegraph  line  in  Germany,  between  Berlin 
and  Frankfort-on-Main,  placing  it  underground.  In  1850  the 
firm  began  experimenting  with  the  Morse  writing  telegraph. 

At  the  London  Exposition  of  1851  the  firm  was  awarded  the 
council  medal,  one  of  the  highest  prizes.  Their  first  phenomenal 
work,  however,  was  done  during  the  Crimean  War  for  Russia, 
laying  in  a  short  time  telegraph  lines  between  the  Prussian  fron- 
tier to  Warsaw,  St.  Petersburg  (a  distance  of  over  1,000  miles), 
and  later  to  Odessa,  Kieff ,  Reval,  Helsingfors,  Kovno,  and  to 
Sebastopol  itself,  where  at  a  certain  time  Siemens'  perfected  tel- 
egraph apparatus  was  worked  during  the  siege  both  on  the  Russian 
and  the  British  sides.  Owing  to  the  speedy  and  reliable  manner 
in  which  the  firm  had  served  Russia  in  those  early  days,  the 
Russian  government  appointed  them  contractors  for  the  erection 
and  maintenance  of  telegraph  lines  within  the  whole  empire, 
and  from  that  time  on  the  firm  did  a  steady  and  flourishing 
branch  business  in  St.  Petersburg. 

In  1853  another  brother,  William,  after  doing  a  successful 
business  in  England  with  the  telegraph  and  cable  apparatus 
of  the  Berlin  home  firm,  was  entrusted  with  the  management  of  a 
branch  house  in  London,  one  which  steadily  grew  until  at  times 
it  outvied  the  parent  in  size  and  earnings.  The  first  two  im- 
portant strokes  of  business  done  there  by  the  firm  was  the  fur- 
nishing of  all  the  material  needed  in  the  government  telegraph 
lines  in  India,  and  later  on  in  the  manufacture  and  invention  of  a 
water  meter.  In  1857  they  laid,  for  an  English  firm,  the  cable 
connecting  Sardinia  with  Bona  in  Africa,  at  a  depth  of  10,000 
feet  below  the  sea  surface,  and  after  an  English  contractor  had 


128  GERMANY 

thrice  failed.  In  the  execution  of  this  difficult  task  Werner 
Siemens  discovered  and  fixed  for  all  time  the  scientific  founda- 
tion for  the  laying  of  cables.  In  1859  the  firm  built  the  cable 
line  from  Suez  via  Aden  to  Kurrachee  in  India,  a  total  length  of 
about  3,500  miles. 

In  1866  the  firm  showed  the  first  little  dynamo-electric  ma- 
chine, a  mine  exploder,  to  a  body  of  scientists  in  Berlin.  Shortly 
afterwards  they  laid  the  overland  telegraph  line  between  England 
and  India,  via  Germany,  Russia,  and  Persia,  as  far  as  Calcutta,  a 
distance  of  about  7,000  miles,  fitting  it  out  with  the  new  auto- 
matic telegraph  system,  likewise  an  invention  of  the  firm.  From 
that  time  on,  the  business  of  the  firm  having  grown  enormously 
both  in  bulk  and  in  intricacy,  the  policy  was  inaugurated  of  ad- 
mitting to  partnership  or  entrusting  with  the  direction  of  various 
departments,  young  and  ambitious  men  of  talent,  such  as  the 
two  electrical  engineers,  Carl  Frischen  and  Hefner- Alteneck, 
who  later  on  made  some  inventions  of  extraordinary  importance, 
which  the  firm  subsequently  exploited. 

Early  in  the  seventies  the  firm  devised  some  startling  improve- 
ments on  the  Morse  telegraph,  such  as  the  perfecting  of  the  ink 
writers  and  embossers,  and  constructed  a  new  instrument  for 
automatic  fast  writing,  the  chain  fast  writer,  the  relay  fast  writer, 
and  fast  printers,  all  of  which  was  accomplished  by  Hefner- 
Alteneck,  while  Frischen  successfully  devoted  his  attention  to 
the  railway  block-system.  In  1874  the  firm  succeeded  in  break- 
ing the  monopoly  of  the  existing  British  cable  ring,  built  its  own 
cable-laying  steamer,  the  Faraday,  and  erected  its  own  large 
gutta  percha  works  in  Charlton,  near  London,  so  that  its  em- 
ploye's there  numbered  2,500,  and  enabling  them  to  lay  a  number 
of  big  cable  lines  to  America  and  elsewhere.  The  firm  went  on 
devising  improvements  both  in  the  material  used  and  in  the  man- 
ner of  laying  submarine  cables,  and  the  most  perfect  of  these  lines 
was  laid  in  the  summer  of  1900,  for  the  Commercial  Cable  Co., 
which  formed  a  supplement  to  the  cable  which  the  German  gov- 
ernment had  ordered  at  the  same  time.  The  firm  also  laid,  from 
1876  on,  a  network  of  underground  telegraph  lines  through 
Germany.  At  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1900  the  firm  placed,  side 
by  side,  the  two  great  inventions  of  its  own,  the  differential  lamp 
of  the  eighties  and  the  electric  tramways  of  the  nineties,  both 


KRUPP   AND   SIEMENS  129 

from  an  economic  standpoint  of  vast  importance  in  the  devel- 
opment of  modern  industry,  and  received  for  its  exhibits  the 
highest  awards  granted  by  the  jury  to  any  exhibitor,  of  what- 
ever nationality,  in  cognate  lines. 

For  considerable  time  past,  since  about  1890,  the  best  energies 
of  the  firm  have  been  engrossed  in  the  construction  of  electric 
plants,  of  electric  railways,  trolleys,  central  stations,  etc.,  and  in 
this  respect  it  has  done  more  in  Germany,  Austria,  Hungary, 
Italy,  England,  South  America,  and  elsewhere  than  any  other 
single  firm,  and  has  been  the  chief  factor  in  raising  German 
electrotechnics  to  its  present  height.  The  firm  has  been  con- 
structing dynamos  in  Berlin  and  Vienna  at  the  rate  of  200,000 
kilowatts  per  annum.  In  applying  themselves  to  this  task 
Siemens  &  Halske  created,  as  the  first  1,000  h.  p.  electrical 
engine,  a  totally  new  type  of  dynamo  machine,  the  so-called 
inner-pole  machine,  leading  to  a  new  era  in  dynamo  construction. 
In  order  to  display  a  more  intense  activity  in  the  line  of  dynamo 
building,  the  firm  found  it  necessary  to  encircle  the  inland  and 
foreign  countries  with  a  net  of  technical  branch  offices,  a  novel 
and  bold  move,  which  at  the  time  and  since  has  been  much 
criticized.  Among  the  later  achievements  of  the  firm,  the  im- 
provement of  the  Hughes  apparatus  deserves  to  be  mentioned, 
and  the  large  telegraph  offices  at  Berlin,  Munich,  Nuremberg,  and 
Stuttgart  were  equipped  with  it.  They  also  invented  a  con- 
trivance supplying  ships  with  electric  power  transmission,  espe- 
cially for  operating  armoured  turrets  of  men-of-war,  and  invented 
and  practically  applied  the  rotary  current  plant  to  railway  sta- 
tions, the  first  successful  instance  on  a  large  scale  being  in  the 
new  and  enormous  central  station  in  Dresden.  They  have  con- 
structed electric  elevators  as  early  at  1880,  electric  hammers, 
rock  drills,  electric  ploughs,  etc.  They  were  also  the  first  in 
the  world  to  solve  the  problem,  to  a  certain  extent  at  least,  of 
operating  long-distance  railways  by  electricity. 

Much  has  also  been  done  by  the  firm  in  railroad  signals,  night 
signal  apparatus  for  ships,  railroad  safety  appliances,  electric 
switches,  electric  signals,  telephones  microphones  (of  which 
last  year  they  manufactured  60,000  each  for  the  Berlin  postal 
authorities),  megaphones,  and  loud-speaking  telephones.  The 
firm  was  the  inventor  of  the  cyanide  of  potassium  process  of 


130  GERMANY 

extracting  gold  from  tailings  and  slime,  and  they  lead  in  the 
matter  of  constructing  electric  smelting  furnaces. 

Thus  the  firm  has  maintained  up  to  the  present,  all  through 
the  long  space  of  fifty-five  years,  an  unbroken  reputation  of 
being  always  abreast  of  the  times  in  both  scientific  research  and 
in  technical  fructification  of  the  latest  inventions,  although  in 
its  composition  it  has  undergone  great  changes.  Werner,  the 
greatest  genius  of  the  family,  both  in  theory  and  practice, 
is  dead,  and  his  two  brothers  likewise.  The  sons  of  these  men 
are  now  at  the  helm,  and  the  financial  management  has  been 
greatly  modified. 

As  to  the  relations  subsisting  this  long  time  between  the  found- 
ers of  the  firm  and  their  employe's,  they  have,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Krupps,  been  uniformly  characterized  by  a  spirit  of  mutual 
kindness  and  forbearance.  No  strikes  have  ever  troubled  the 
firm,  and  as  early  as  1872,  while  the  concern  was  still  in  its  in- 
fancy, the  stockholders  first  created  a  beneficiary  fund  for  their 
employe's.  From  that  on  a  spirit  of  fairness  and  a  willingness  to 
assist  employe's  in  distress  has  been  uniformly  shown  by  the 
Siemens.  So  that  in  this  respect,  as  in  others,  the  firm  resembles 
that  of  Krupp.  Both  seem  to  be,  indeed,  living  and  powerful 
exponents  in  Germany  of  the  fact  that  it  pays  employers  to 
treat  their  employe's  with  more  than  mere  justice. 


CHAPTER   X 

SHIPPING 

OVER  the  portal  of  the  Navigation  House  in  Bremen  may  be 
read  the  Latin  device:  "  Navigare  necesse  est."  And,  indeed, 
to  Bremen  and  Hamburg  and  some  other  German  cities  navi- 
gation is  a  necessity.  But  not  only  to  them — to  the  whole  of 
Germany  to-day,  an  absolute  necessity.  For  the  recent  develop 
ment  of  that  country  on  industrial  and  commercial  lines  has  been 
such  that  the  cessation  of  German  marine  transport,  if  only  for 
the  short  space  of  a  month,  would  be  a  very  serious  national 
disaster.  It  would  stop  her  manufactures ;  it  would  work  tem- 
porary ruin  to  her  trade;  it  would  bring  her  people  to  the  brink 
of  starvation,  and  beggar  thousands  of  her  merchants.  Those 
beehives  of  human  industry  along  the  Rhine  and  its  tributaries 
would  become  mute,  and  the  long  freight  trains  which  now  at  all 
hours  wend  their  way,  laden  with  the  spoils  of  every  clime,  from 
the  seaboard  to  the  inland  towns,  supplying  their  toilers  with  the 
rawstuffs  to  be  wrought  into  finished  fabrics,  and  empty  stom- 
achs with  the  wherewithal  to  live,  would  idly  clog  the  rails. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  tons  of  manufactured  products,  in- 
tended for  shipment  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  would 
encumber  warehouses  and  docks,  unable  to  leave  for  their  desti- 
nation. For  Germany  is  now  essentially  an  exporting  and 
importing  country,  unable  to  live  for  even  a  month  without 
supplies  from  abroad,  just  like  England. 

Time  was  when  Germany,  like  this  country,  "was  sufficient  to 
herself";  when  her  fields  and  meadows  brought  forth  enough 
nourishment  to  all  her  people.  That  time,  however,  is  past. 
She  now  cannot  feed  all  her  hungry  mouths.  She  would  have 
to  let  die  of  starvation  every  third  inhabitant  of  the  empire, 
were  she  to  rely  solely  on  her  own  agricultural  produce.  This 
is  a  truth  which  has  not  yet  been  sufficiently  recognized  within 
her  borders.  But  unpalatable  as  it  is  to  her,  it  is,  nevertheless, 


GERMANY 

a  truth.  The  imperial  census  of  1895  and  the  one  of  1900  pro- 
claim the  fact  in  unmistakable  language  to  the  whole  world. 
No  legislation  will  change  this,  or  if  changed  it  would  at  the 
same  time  precipitate  a  gigantic  economic  crisis,  a  crisis  so  piti- 
less and  far-reaching  that  one  stands  aghast  at  the  mere  idea  of 
it.  Germany  had  the  ambition  to  become  a  great  commercial 
nation,  a  vast  emporium  and  centre  of  international  trade. 
Well,  she  has  become  that,  but  with  the  incalculable  benefits 
thus  accruing  to  her  she  must  also  accept  the  inevitable  penalties. 

The  enormous  and  rapid  rise  of  shipping  has  gone  parallel  with 
the  rise  in  industry  and  commerce.  It  is  the  growth  of  the  last 
two  decades,  and  more  especially  of  the  last  one.  When  the 
nineteenth  century  dawned,  German  seafaring  had  almost  be- 
come a  lost  art.  Hamburg,  till  then  one  of  the  most  prosperous 
and  important  shipping  centres  on  the  European  continent,  had 
been  doomed  to  almost  annihilation  by  the  Napoleonic  policy  of 
shutting  off  the  whole  continent  from  English  sea  trade.  But  it 
is  precisely  Hamburg  which  to-day  illustrates  most  strikingly 
Germany's  rise  in  shipping.  Up  to  1872  Hamburg  was  more  an 
English  than  a  German  harbour.  In  that  year  5,913  ships  put 
into  that  leading  German  port,  with  a  total  capacity  of  2,100,000 
register  tons.  Of  these  the  English  vessels  showed  1,100,000 
tons  and  the  German  vessels  but  658,000  tons,  the  remainder 
being  vessels  of  other  nationalities.  Fifteen  years  later  the 
point  had  been  reached  where  the  German  vessels  exceeded  the 
English  both  in  number  and  capacity,  for  out  of  a  total  number 
of  7,308  ships,  with  3,900,000  tons,  that  arrived  in  Hamburg  in 
1887,  there  were  3,674  German  with  1,734,271  tonnage,  and  but 
2,509  English,  with  1,696,181  tonnage.  Since  1895  German 
superiority  has  become  a  settled  feature.  In  1900,  of  the  13,102 
ships  that  arrived  in  Hamburg,  having  a  joint  capacity  of 
8,000,000  tons,  there  were  7,640  German  ships  with  4,300,000 
tons  and  3,442  English  with  2,800,000  tons.  Of  these  English 
vessels  about  one-half,  viz.,  1,816  with  1,300,000  tons,  were 
colliers.  And  as  in  number,  the  German  vessels  have  also 
increased  in  size.  In  1872  the  German  vessel  averaged  about 
one-half  the  size  of  the  English  one.  To-day  the  German  vessel 
averages  fifty  per  cent,  more  in  size  than  the  English  one. 

Up  to  1872  the  London  shipper  and  trader  was  the  middleman 


SHIPPING  133 

for  Hamburg.  In  London  the  goods  arrived  first,  from  the 
British  colonies  and  from  nearly  all  far-away  countries,  and  after 
selecting  from  this  wealth  of  goods  the  choicest  and  best  for 
the  English  market,  the  London  merchant  sent  a  portion  of  the 
remainder  over  to  Hamburg,  to  supply  the  continental  market. 
The  development  of  Hamburg  and  Germany  as  a  whole  wrought 
an  entire  change  in  this.  The  direct  transatlantic  trade  of 
Hamburg  grew  by  mighty  bounds.  It  grew  at  a  much  larger  rate  / 
than  the  city's  trade  with  England,  although  that,  too,  has  in- 
creased wonderfully.  Between  1899  and  1901  the  transatlantic 
trade  of  Hamburg  increased  by  279,000  tons,  while  its  trade  with 
English  ports  increased  but  210,000  tons.  In  1901  there  arrived 
in  Hamburg  1,612  vessels  of  a  total  tonnage  of  3,600,000,  with 
transatlantic  freights  on  board,  and  11,235  ships  of  together 
4,800,000  tons  from  European  ports. 

The  receding  wave  of  English  trade  to  Hamburg  is  also  seen  in 
the  figures  given  for  Hamburg's  quay  traffic.  These  quays, 
because  of  the  relatively  high  dues  exacted,  are  only  used  by 
ships  with  costly  cargoes.  In  1897,  of  the  4,341  ships  with 
3,500,000  tons  which  there  loaded  and  unloaded,  there  were  still 
1,768  English  ones  with  1,300,000  tons,  as  against  1,715  German 
ones  with  1,900,000  tons.  But  in  1901  out  of  the  total  of  4,973 
ships  that  put  in  at  these  quays,  having  a  combined  tonnage  of 
4,700,000  tons,  there  were  2,116  German  with  2,900,000  tons,  as 
against  only  1,862  English  ones,  having  a  tonnage  of  but 
1,300,000. 

Hamburg  is  indeed  the  best  illustration  to  be  found  of 
Germany's  rise  as  a  seafaring  nation.  It  is  now  by  far  the  largest 
harbour  on  the  European  continent,  having  left  Marseilles  and 
Bordeaux  far  in  the  rear  years  ago,  and  being  exceeded  in  number 
of  ships  and  in  bulk  of  value  of  traffic  by  only  one  other  harbour 
in  the  world,  viz.,  London.  But  she  has  done,  too,  everything 
which  enterprise  and  wise  foresight  could  do  to  bring  this  about. 
Hamburg  has  spent  more  money  than  any  other  two  harbours  in 
the  world  together  during  the  last  score  of  years  to  perfect  her 
technical  facilities.  Her  system  of  quays  and  docks  is  the  best  in 
existence,  and  the  twenty-five  million  dollars  laid  out  by  her 
municipality  and  her  shipowners  in  these  improvements  are 
bringing  rich  fruit.  All  these  improvements  are  made  of  durable 


134  GERMANY 

material,  stone  and  iron  and  steel,  are  handsome  in  appearance, 
and  are  equipped  with  hydraulic  machinery,  with  cranes  and 
other  hoisting  apparatus,  that  are  equal  to  any  emergency.  In 
fact,  to-day  hydraulic  engineers  the  world  over  go  to  Hamburg 
just  to  study  these  triumphs  of  professional  skill,  as  they  for- 
merly used  to  go  to  London  and  Liverpool.  The  water  front  of 
Hamburg,  with  its  miles  of  docks  and  quays,  is  a  modern  marvel 
of  practical  genius,  and  may  stand  for  a  fitting  and  eloquent  type 
of  material  progress  in  Germany.  American  engineers  are  par- 
ticularly struck  with  that  fact  on  their  first  visit  to  Hamburg, 
and  with  patriotic  qualms  they  draw  involuntary  comparisons 
with  the  ragged  and  ill-appointed  water  fronts  of  our  leading 
American  harbour  cities,  in  whose  management  unfortunately  no 
such  prevision  and  wisdom  is  shown. 

And  there  is  another  thing  that  needs  pointing  out.  Hamburg 
is  now  drawing  a  steady  and  ever-increasing  revenue  from  these 
costly  improvements,  revenues  which  are  even  now  equivalent 
to  a  good  percentage  on  the  capital  invested,  while  the  indirect 
gain  accruing  to  the  city  in  attracting  a  larger  and  larger  volume 
of  shipping  is  many  times  greater.  The  thing  has  paid  in  every 
sense  of  the  word. 

What  is  said  here  of  Hamburg  is  equally  true  of  the  other 
German  harbours,  though  not  in  the  same  ratio.  It  applies  to 
Bremen,  whose  growth,  too,  in  every  respect  has  been  remark- 
able. It  has  grown  to  almost  200,000  population,  as  against 
Hamburg's  700,000,  and  its  shipping  has  more  than  doubled  since 
the  empire  was  founded.  It  applies  to  Stettin,  whose  popula- 
tion is  a  quarter  of  a  million,  and  whose  trade  has  grown  four- 
fold, and  which  not  only  has  appropriated  to  itself  a  large  portion 
of  the  Scandinavian  and  Russian  Baltic  trade  formerly  possessed 
by  Copenhagen  and  Gothenburg,  but  has  reached  out  to  America 
as  well  and  includes  a  regular  freight  and  passenger  steamer  line 
to  New  York.  It  applies  to  Dantzic,  now  a  city  of  150,000, 
and  whose  shipping  interests  are  again  what  they  were  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  It  applies  to  Elbing  and  Pillau  and  some  other 
Baltic  harbours  of  Prussia  near  the  Russian  border,  and  it  applies 
to  a  dozen  smaller  ports  on  the  North  Sea,  like  Geestemunde, 
Vegesack,  Emden,  Wilhelmshaven,  and  others.  It  applies  above 
all  to  Kiel,  the  terminus  of  the  Baltic  Canal,  the  seat  of  the  im- 


SHIPPING  135 

mense  imperial  navy  yards,  and  of  the  Krupp  Germania  ship- 
yards, and  now  a  city  of  120,000,  having  quadrupled  its  size 
since  1870. 

Rapid  and  yet  steady  progress  is  seen  everywhere  in  the 
German  shipyards,  and  intense  activity  as  well.  From  very 
small  beginnings  they  have  risen  step  by  step  until  they  equal 
the  British  ones  in  efficiency  and  capacity.  Nay,  in  the  light  of 
recent  experience  it  must  even  be  admitted  that  their  claim  of 
building  the  finest  and  speediest  ocean  greyhounds  seems  well 
founded. 

At  the  close  of  1901,  Germany  had  4,017  seagoing  vessels 
afloat,  with  a  tonnage  slightly  exceeding  the  two  million  and  a  half 
mark,  and  has  attained  second  place  in  the  world,  England 
alone  surpassing  her.  Of  these  less  than  400,000  tons  fall  to  the 
share  of  her  Baltic  fleet,  the  rest  having  their  home  in  some  North 
Sea  harbour.  A  total  of  over  50,000  men  formed  the  crews  of 
these  ships.  At  the  end  of  the  war  with  France,  in  1871, 
German  shipping  was  still  so  far  behind  that  it  was  largely  con- 
fined to  that  inland  sea,  the  Baltic.  Of  the  ships  then,  but  few 
were  steamers  and  hardly  any  of  iron.  But  147  were  steamers 
in  1871,  and  4,372  sailing  vessels,  the  total  tonnage  for  all 
German  seagoing  vessels  then  being  considerably  below  500,000, 
having  since  quintupled.  Now  there  are  1,293  steamers,  against 
2,288  sailing  vessels,  and  of  the  steamers  all  but  a  few  are  built 
of  steel,  while  even  the  sailing  vessels  are  for  the  most  part  of 
the  same  durable  material.  In  size,  too,  there  has  been  the  same 
rate  of  increase.  Of  her  sailing  vessels,  158  are  2,000  tons  or 
over,  and  the  largest  sailing  vessels  afloat  to-day  are  German. 
They  are  leviathans  of  4,000  tons,  and  trade  only  between  the 
west  coast  of  South  America  and  Hamburg. 

The  larger  part  of  our  American  shipping  plies  on  the  big  lakes, 
the  tonnage  of  these  vessels  exceeding  the  seagoing  ones. 
Germany,  too,  has  besides  the  above  ocean  ships  a  very  large 
number  attending  to  her  river  and  inland  lake  traffic.  No  later 
figures  exist  than  those  for  1897,  but  in  that  year  there  were 
22,564  such  vessels,  with  a  total  tonnage  of  3,370,447,  of  which 
20,611  were  propelled  by  wind  and  1,953  by  steam  or  electricity. 
Many  of  these  steamers  are  of  good  size  and  well  appointed  for 
the  passenger  traffic,  and  2,519  of  these  river  ships  were  over 


136  GERMANY 

300  tons  in  size.  The  passenger  steamers  on  the  Rhine,  on  the 
Elbe  and  on  the  Weser  and  Oder  are  handsome  and  substantial 
vessels,  and  equipped  with  a  high  degree  of  comfort.  The  ex- 
traordinary development  of  this  internal  system  of  water  com- 
munication has  been  greatly  aided,  of  course,  by  the  fact  that  all 
the  larger  German  rivers  are  navigable  by  good-sized  vessels  for 
great  distances,  and  that  they  flow  through  densely  settled 
parts  of  the  country.  Such  relatively  unimportant  rivers  as  the 
Pregel,  the  Vistula,  and  the  Ems  have,  for  instance,  navigable 
parts  of  a  respective  length  of  273,  508,  and  274  kilometres. 
The  navigable  canals  constructed  to  connect  the  Oder  and  Elbe 
rivers  and  their  tributary  systems  have  a  length  of  150  kilo- 
metres, and  the  Elbe  system  alone  has  navigable  parts  of  over 
3,000  kilometers,  or  about  2,000  miles,  while  the  Oder  system 
shows  navigable  parts  of  a  total  length  of  2,300  kilometres,  and 
the  Weser  of  1,100  kilometers,  while  the  Rhine  navigable  system 
on  German  territory  is  2,700  kilometres  in  length. 

The  quantities  of  goods  of  every  description  that  are  trans- 
ported on  these  internal  waterways  are  simply  enormous.  Thus, 
at  Emmerich,  the  German-Dutch  frontier  station  on  the  lower 
Rhine,  there  passed  in  1899  altogether  some  7,000,000  tons  of 
various  wares  on  board  of  German  Rhine  vessels,  ores,  cereals, 
petroleum,  coal  and  flour  being  the  leading  products  among 
them.  The  goods  reaching  Berlin  by  water  on  the  Spree  (a 
tributary  of  the  Elbe  River)  and  Havel,  amounted  last  year  in 
bulk  to  about  9,000,000  tons,  and  in  value  to  some  $120,000,000. 
From  Hamburg  the  Elbe  ships  brought  in  1899  goods  amounting 
to  some  4,200,000  tons  in  weight  and  about  $56,000,000  in 
value.  These  are  but  figures  taken  at  random. 

After  all,  though,  it  is  Germany's  ocean  traffic  that  the  world 
at  large  feels  mainly  interested  in.  And  brief  mention  of  some 
of  her  largest  shipbuilding  firms  and  of  her  leading  steamer  lines 
will  be  necessary  to  give  an  adequate  idea  of  that. 

Of  the  latter,  the  Hamburg- America  and  the  Bremen  Lloyd 
companies  are,  of  course,  best  known  to  Americans.  They  are, 
too,  the  most  representative  and  the  largest  German  lines. 

There  had  been,  prior  to  the  founding  of  these  two  companies, 
a  sort  of  regular  ocean  passenger  and  freight  communication 
between  New  York  on  the  one  side  and  Hamburg  and  Bremen 


SHIPPING  137 

on  the  other.  The  first  of  these  regular  lines  was  started  in 
1828  by  some  Hamburg  capitalists,  but  after  a  few  years  failed. 
Next,  the  Hamburg  firm  of  Sloman  &  Co.  organized  another  line 
in  1836,  but  it  never  amounted  to  a  great  deal.  Then,  the  Ocean 
S.  S.  Navigation  Company  was  started,  in  1874,  for  traffic  be- 
tween Bremen  and  New  York,  the  shareholders  being  the  Bremen 
municipality  and  a  number  of  wealthy  German  merchants 
both  in  New  York  and  in  Germany.  They  built  the  steamer 
Washington,  which  thereafter  plied  regularly,  for  a  number  of 
years,  between  those  two  ports.  It  was  a  paddle  steamer  of 
some  1,500  tons,  and  rather  slow.  The  Washington  flew  the 
American  flag. 

These  were  the  first  modest  beginnings  in  regular  ocean  traffic 
between  this  country  and  the  two  enterprising  German  Hansa 
towns. 

On  May  27,  1847,  the  Hamburg- America  Line  was  founded  in 
Hamburg,  the  initial  capital  being  465,000  marks,  or  a  little 
over  $100,000.  With  this  money  they  built  two  sailing  vessels 
intended  primarily  for  steerage  passengers — /.  e.,  emigrants,  and 
for  freight.  The  first  of  these  vessels  was  the  Deutschland,  of 
717  register  tons,  and  with  a  capacity  for  200  steerage  and  20 
cabin  passengers.  It  cost  132,000  marks,  or  about  $32,000.  This 
ship  was  then  the  first,  and  out  of  it  has  grown  under  that  cau- 
tious and  wise  management  for  which  that  line  as  well  as  the 
Bremen  Lloyd  Company  have  ever  been  noted,  the  present 
enormous  fleet.  The  Hamburg- America  Line  is  to-day  the 
largest  in  the  world,  no  British  or  French  company  comparing 
either  in  size  or  in  steamer  connections  with  it. 

Success  and  growth  came  slowly.  The  company  increased 
the  number  of  its  sailing  vessels  to  six,  with  together  4,000  regis- 
ter tons  capacity,  and  each  of  these  six  vessels  made  three  trips 
back  and  forth  per  annum  between  Hamburg  and  New  York. 
They  required  about  forty-two  days  for  the  western  and  thirty 
days  for  the  eastern,  the  homeward,  trip.  In  1855  the  company 
started  out  on  the  "new  tack,"  with  two  steamers.  One  of  them 
was  the  Borussia,  of  2,026  tons,  and  of  twelve  knots  speed.  This 
ship  had  to  be  built  in  England,  no  German  shipyard  those  days 
being  able  to  construct  a  vessel  of  this  size.  It  had  a  crew  of 
seventv-seven  men,  and  the  English  government  hired  the 


138  GERMANY 

Borussia  during  the  Crimean  War  to  transport  British  troops. 
But  in  March,  1856,  the  Borussia  started  on  regular  trips  be- 
tween Hamburg  and  New  York.  Soon  after,  with  growing  suc- 
cess, the  Hamburg- America  Line  got  a  formidable  rival  in  the 
North  German  Lloyd,  founded  in  1857,  and  the  competition  thus 
resulting  between  the  two  companies  proved  a  very  material 
slement  in  the  increasing  efficiency  of  both  lines. 

The  Hamburg- America  Line  grew  apace.  In  1880  the  com- 
pany's capital  had  been  raised  to  15,000,000  marks,  or  nearly 
$3,750,000,  and  its  fleet  consisted  of  twenty  ocean  steamers,  with 
which  they  sent  58,000  passengers  and  273,000  cubic  metres  of 
freight  to  this  country.  The  first  rapid  steamer  built  by  the 
company  was  the  Hammonia,  which  began  her  trips  in  1883, 
and  from  that  time  on  the  company  built  one  fast  steamer  after 
another.  But  it  was  particularly  the  last  decade  during  which 
the  Hamburg-America  Line,  simultaneous  with  the  empire's 
phenomenal  rise  in  commerce  and  industry,  made  its  most 
rapid  progress.  New  branch  lines  were  started  to  Boston, 
Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Canada,  Mexico,  Genoa,  far  Asia, 
South  America,  etc.,  and  the  freight  traffic  to  New  York  rose 
stupendously. 

Up  to  the  time  the  Kronprinz  Wilhelm  began  to  run,  not  long 
ago,  the  company  had,  too,  unquestionably  the  fastest  and 
largest  steamer  afloat  in  the  world — the  Deutschland.  The 
Kronprinz  now  contests  that  claim.  The  Dcuischland  was 
constructed  by  the  Vulcan  Works  in  Stettin,  and  in  1900  began 
regular  trips  to  New  York.  The  Deutschland  measures  686  feet 
in  length,  67  feet  in  width,  and  44  feet  in  depth.  She  carries 
16,502  register  tons,  which  enormous  space  is,  however,  almost 
entirely  reserved  for  passengers  and  their  requisites,  so  that 
hardly  anything  is  left  for  freight  purposes.  She  has  a  recorded 
speed  of  23.36  knots,  and  her  machinery  has  35,600  horsepower. 
She  has  a  crew  and  other  personnel  of  525  people,  and  room  for 
767  cabin  and  300  steerage  passengers.  She  requires  485  car- 
loads of  coal  on  every  trip,  and  cost  $3,000,000  to  build. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  rate  at  which  the  steamers  of  this 
company,  as  their  cost,  size,  and  machinery  were  gradually 
increased,  have  gained  in  speed.  In  1858  the  Hammonia  made 
her  fastest  trip  between  Southampton  and  New  York  in  1 3  days 


SHIPPING  I39 

and  i  hour.  In  1867  the  second  H ammonia  made  it  in  9  days 
and  3  hours.  In  1891  the  Fuerst  Bismarck,  one  of  the  company's 
new  fast  steamers,  reduced  this  for  the  same  trip  to  6  days,  n 
hours,  44  minutes.  And  in  1900  the  Deutschland  further 
reduced  this  time  to  5  days,  7  hours,  38  minutes. 

The  increase  in  vessels  and  tonnage  has  proceeded  at  an  accel- 
erated pace  with  the  Hamburg- America  Line  of  late.  During 

1900  some  145,000  tons  were  added  to  its  capacity,  and  during 

1901  the  increase  was  even  larger.    In  1900  it  sent  160,000  persons 
across  the  seas.     Besides  its  branch  lines  mentioned  before,  it 
now  sends  seven  or  eight  steamers  per  month  to  the  West  Indies, 
has  regular  communication  to  Galveston,  to  the  west  coast  of 
America,  including  San  Francisco ;  undertakes  regular  passenger 
pleasure  trips  as  far  south  as  the  Mediterranean  and  as  far  north 
as  the  North  Cape ;  and  sends  two  other  lines  of  steamers  around 
Africa,  one  along  the  east  coast,  via  Suez,  and  another  along  the 
west  coast. 

On  December  31,  1901,  the  annual  report  of  the  company 
showed  that  it  had  worked  with  a  capital  of  160,000,000  marks, 
or  about  $40,000,000,  and  had  earned  profits  from  the  trips  un- 
dertaken by  its  vessels  to  the  amount  of  $4,500,000.  Its  fleet  of 
ocean  steamers  at  that  date  numbered  127,  with  a  capacity  of 
630,091  register  tons,  and  152  river  steamers  of  together  31,264 
tons.  This  includes  thirteen  vessels  now  under  construction,  of 
together  77,730  tons.  The  number  of  its  employe's  ashore  is  over 
10,000,  and  on  the  seas  about  7,500. 

But  slightly  behind  the  Hamburg- America  is  the  North 
German  Lloyd  in  Bremen.  Its  beginnings  also  as  humble, 
its  growth  as  gradual,  the  Lloyd  started  in  1857  with  three 
small  steamers,  the  Adlcr,  Mowc,  and  Falkc,  which  plied  regu- 
larly between  Bremen  and  the  English  ports,  while  four  good- 
sized  propeller  steamers  had  been  ordered  built  in  English  and 
Scotch  yards,  intended  to  inaugurate  regular  and  relatively  fast 
steamer  communication  with  New  York.  The  Bremen  was  the 
first  of  these  vessels,  and  she  made  her  initial  trip  on  June  19, 
1858,  having  94  passengers  and  100  tons  of  freight  on  board. 
This  vessel  had  the  respectable  length  of  334  feet,  and  a  depth 
of  42,  measuring  from  the  upper  deck,  and  was  of  700  horse- 
power. There  was  considerable  comfort  on  board,  for  beside? 


i4o  GERMANY 

luxurious  furniture  and  good  beds,  there  was  also  a  fane  piano, 
two  bath-rooms,  and  a  good  library.  The  trip  to  New  York  took 
15  days,  but  the  return  voyage  was  made  in  12  1-2  days.  Dur- 
ing the  same  year  three  other  steamers  were  put  into  service, 
the  Hudson,  the  Weser,  and  the  New  York.  The  service  was  a 
fortnightly  one.  The  next  year  the  United  States  and  the 
British  governments  entrusted  the  carrying  of  the  mails  to  the 
Lloyd,  a  fact  which  helped  it  greatly  in  business  and  prestige. 

The  Lloyd  started  the  building  of  fast  steamers  soon  after  the 
Arizona,  of  the  Guion  Line,  in  1878,  had  shown  a  speed  of  16 
knots,  and  in  1881  the  Elbe  made  the  first  fast  trip  to  New  York, 
two  other  speedy  steamers,  the  Wcrra  and  the  Fulda,  following 
•soon.  At  that  time,  too,  the  service  was  changed  to  a  weekly 
Dne,  and  the  duration  of  the  trip  to  New  York  had  been  reduced 
to  eight  or  nine  days.  It  was  then  that  the  Lloyd  scored  the 
triumph  oi  carrying  the  United  States  mail  to  Southampton  and 
London  in  the  shortest  time  on  record — till  then,  of  course.  An 
increasing  number  of  these  fast  steamers  was  built,  and  the  capi- 
tal stock  of  the  company  was  several  times  raised.  In  1885  the 
German  empire  made  a  contract  with  the  Lloyd  for  regular  mail 
steamer  lines  to  a  number  of  ports  in  East  Asia  and  Australia. 

The  Veutschland  of  the  Hamburg  Line  was  answered  by  the 
Lloyd  with  the  Kronprinz  Wilhelm.  Its  dimensions  are :  663  feet 
in  length,  66  feet  in  width,  and  43  feet  in  depth.  It  holds  15,000 
register  tons,  and  is  considerably  larger  than  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm 
der  Grossc,  exceeding  that  leviathan  slightly  in  speed  as  well. 
Her  machinery  shows  35,000  horsepower,  and  her  bunkers  con- 
tain 4,450  tons  of  coal  on  leaving  either  port.  Her  crew  numbers 
500,  and  she  can  accommodate  650  first-class  passengers,  350 
second-class,  and  700  steerage  passengers. 

At  present  the  Lloyd  operates  twenty-seven  steamer  lines — 
five  lines  to  North  America,  two  to  South  America,  two  to  far 
Asia,  one  to  Australia,  four  branch  lines  connecting  with  the  far 
Asia  lines,  nine  branch  lines  in  the  coast  and  archipelago  service  of 
far  Asia,  and  four  European  lines.  Last  year  Lloyd  ships  made 
4,707,000  sea  miles,  and  transported  253,225  passengers,  thus 
beating  the  world  record.  In  all,  up  to  1901,  the  company's 
ships  transported  4,160,431  passengers.  The  consumption  of 
coal  during  1900  amounted  to  20,750,000  marks,  or  over 


SHIPPING 

$5,000,000,  and  for  provisions  it  spent  some  $2,300,000. 
The  company's  capital  now  reaches  110,000,000  marks,  or 
about  $26,000,000.  Their  combined  fleet  is  manned  by  over 
10,000  persons,  of  whom  505  are  captains  and  522  engineers. 
On  shore  the  Lloyd  employs  320  clerks  and  managers,  2,000 
technical  employe's,  and  over  6,000  hands  as  stevedores,  long- 
shoremen and  so  forth. 

There  are  seventy-seven  large-sized  ocean  steamers  in  the 
Lloyd,  forty-six  coastwise  steamers  in  the  Chino-Indian  trade, 
and  forty-three  river  steamers  with  a  tonnage  of  598,457.  As 
a  specialty  it  deserves  mention  that  the  Lloyd  has  also  a  training 
ship  of  2,581  tons,  the  Duchess  Sophie  Charlotte,  in  continuous 
operation,  whereon  the  future  officers  and  engineers  to  man  the 
Lloyd  vessels  are  learning  their  business  practically  and  theo- 
retically, and  very  thoroughly  at  that.  This  ship,  under  the 
command  of  one  of  the  best  old  seadogs  of  the  Lloyd,  Capt.  G. 
Warnecke,  is  undertaking  trips  around  the  world  with  this 
crew,  more  or  less  advanced  from  its  embryo  state,  of  course. 
The  pressure  to  be  enrolled  in  the  ranks  of  this  future  elite  corps 
of  the  German  merchant  marine  was  so  strong  that  but  one  out 
of  every  six  could  be  actually  chosen.  Another  similar  vessel 
is  now  in  construction.  This  idea,  which  originated  with  the 
management  of  the  Lloyd,  is  so  sound  and  sensible  that  it  will 
doubtless  be  imitated  by  other  big  lines,  as  it  seems  to  vouchsafe 
a  regular  and  perfectly  trained  corps  of  men  for  every  branch 
of  the  company's  service,  which  means,  of  course,  the  perpetu- 
ation of  efficient  service  on  the  part  of  the  concern  itself.  The 
pension  system  of  the  Lloyd — although  not  an  exclusive  feature, 
since  it  occurs  also  in  the  Hamburg  and  all  other  German  lines 
— is  brought  to  a  high  degree  of  excellence,  and  every  one  of  its 
employes  knows  on  entering  the  company's  service  that  he  is 
— barring  serious  misbehaviour — practically  provided  for  for  life, 
and  his  family,  present  or  prospective,  as  well.  That,  of  course, 
is  an  enormous  incentive  for  its  men  to  do  their  best,  and  to  die, 
if  need  be,  in  fulfilling  their  duty — a  thing  which  has  been 
repeatedly  exemplified  by  Lloyd  captains  and  men. 

It  is  of  interest  to  note  that,  contrary  to  statements  made  in 
the  English  and  American  press,  the  German  steamer  lines  are 
not  subsidized  at  all  by  their  home  or  any  other  government. 


t42  GERMANY 

Hence  their  success  as  competitors  cannot  be  accounted  for  in 
that  way.  And  the  payments  they  do  get  from  the  imperial 
German  treasury  are  confined  to  an  adequate  remuneration  for 
carrying  the  mails  to  America,  Asia,  Africa,  and  Australia.  But 
this  remuneration  is  by  no  means  as  large  as  the  one  paid  by  the 
English  government  to  British  lines.  In  the  year  1899  the  sum 
paid  by  the  British  government  to  British  vessels  for  mail  service 
amounted  to  $3,810,000,  as  against  $1,920,000  paid  German  ves- 
sels for  the  like  service  by  the  German  government — just  about 
one-half  the  former  sum.  Besides  that,  the  British  government 
obligated  itself  to  a  further  annual  payment  to  British  steamer 
lines  of  $300,000,  for  which  sum  the  latter  agreed  to  put  such  of 
their  steamers  as  are  suited  for  the  purpose  at  the  government's 
disposal  as  cruisers  in  time  of  war,  while  the  German  steamship 
companies  are  under  the  same  obligation  without  receiving  any 
specific  payment  therefor. 

Whether  the  "  M organizing "  of  the  leading  British  steamer 
lines,  and  the  special  agreement  made  also  with  the  Hamburg- 
America  and  the  North  German  Lloyd  lines,  will  have  an  altering 
influence  upon  the  management  of  the  latter,  and  especially 
whether  it  will  tend  to  stop  progress  in  the  further  development 
of  speed  and  efficiency  in  steamer  service,  remains  to  be  seen. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  that,  in  a  measure,  might  be  one  of  the 
effects  of  that  gigantic  deal.  But  at  any  rate,  data  so  far  at  hand 
do  not  indicate  a  tendency  toward  retardation,  and  it  may  be 
expected,  on  the  other  hand,  that  competition  with  the  companies 
not  comprehended  in  the  "pool,"  as  well  as  competition  with  new 
lines  to  be  started,  may  counteract  such  a  tendency,  if  it  should 
become  apparent.  Another  thing — the  German  companies 
have  vigorously  disputed,  and  do  so  still,  that  their  understand- 
ing of  the  "  pool "  is  of  a  nature  to  in  any  way  curtail  their  inde- 
pendence, or  to  make  it  superfluous  for  them  to  go  on  doing  their 
best. 

It  is  quite  possible,  however,  that  the  latest  conjuncture 
brought  about  by  the  efforts  of  Mr.  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  may 
have  the  effect  of  gradually  increasing  again  the  rate  of  steamer 
freights,  which,  indeed,  have  of  recent  years  sunk  to  a  point  never 
before  equaled  in  low  compensation.  Some  figures  will  show  to 
what  an  extent  this  is  true. 


SHIPPING  143 

According  to  some  statistics  lately  published  by  the  Hamburg 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  the  average  freight  per  ton  on  wheat  or 
maize  from  New  York  to  Liverpool  was  thirty-three  shillings  in 
1873,  and  went  down  steadily  until  in  1894  it  amounted  to  only 
six  shillings.  According  to  figures  collected  by  the  New  York 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  the  above  data  were  correct  for  those 
commodities,  while  the  decrease  in  freight  charges  when  measured 
by  the  cubic  foot  was  fifty  per  cent.  Cereals  from  the  lower  Danube 
were  freighted  in  1870  to  Hamburg  at  37  marks  (equal  to  so  many 
shillings)  the  ton,  while  in  1895  the  rate  had  sunk  to  n  marks. 
The  cost  of  water  freight  on  a  ton  of  rice  from  Rangoon  to 
Hamburg  was  in  1872  between  73  and  80  marks,  and  had  fallen 
to  between  25  and  26  marks  in  1895.  Since  then  there  has  been  a 
further  decrease,  and  water  freights  now  have  reached  the  lowest 
ebb  on  record.  In  the  fall  months  of  last  year  a  ton  of  cereals 
was  transported  from  New  York  to  Hamburg  at  5  marks.  That 
was  the  average,  but  in  many  cases  the  price  paid  was  con- 
siderably lower  than  that.  In  May  of  1899,  when  the  official 
rates  between  New  York  and  Hamburg  varied  between  15  and 
17  shillings,  Berlin  corn  merchants  paid  but  4.40  marks  (a  trifle 
above  one  dollar)  per  ton  of  maize  from  Boston  to  Hamburg,  and 
but  2.48  (or  sixty  cents)  per  ton  from  Portland  to  Hamburg. 
Large  steamers  leaving  New  York  on  the  home  trip  to  Germany 
have  often  taken  freight  at  even  lower  rates  than  the  above, 
making  a  virtue  of  necessity;  nay,  in  many  instances  they  have 
transported  freight  gratis.  The  same  applies  to  British  steamers ; 
so  that  last  year,  on  a  number  of  occasions,  Liverpool  houses 
had  wheat  delivered  from  New  York  at  ninepence  the  ton.  Of 
course,  the  scant  crops  in  this  country  last  year  had  considerable 
to  do  with  this. 

It  is  impossible,  of  course,  for  German  internal  trade  and 
transport  to  compete  with  such  figures.  At  present,  for  instance, 
a  ton  of  German  cereals  going  by  water  and  rail  from  Insterburg 
(East  Prussia)  to  Berlin  has  to  pay  32  marks  for  freight  alone, 
and  from  the  same  point  to  Mannheim  (Grandduchy  of  Baden)  it 
costs  even  48  marks,  or  twelve  dollars.  Thus,  corn  or  wheat 
brought  from  American  ports  to  Germany,  even  after  paying  the 
inland  railway  freight,  can  be  laid  down  much  cheaper  than 
when  brought  from  points  in  her  agricultural  east  and  north. 


i44  GERMANY 

Germany  is  now  contemplating  the  construction  of  the  Rhine- 
Weser  Canal.  After  the  completion  of  this  waterway  there  will 
be  a  great  reduction  in  internal  freights.  It  is  estimated  that 
a  ton  of  cereals  can  be  sent  from  Bromberg  (Province  of 
Posen,  in  Eastern  Prussia)  to  Herne  in  Westphalia  for  13.70 
marks,  which  would  mean  a  reduction  of  about  250  per  cent. 

To  further  her  shipping,  and  likewise  to  render  her  navy  more 
independent  of  England  in  the  matter  of  coal  supply,  Germany 
is  now  bending  her  energies  to  the  acquisition  of  coaling  stations. 
Of  late  she  has  made  arrangements  for  large  German  coal  de- 
pots at  Port  Said,  at  the  end  of  the  Suez  Canal.  She  is  erecting 
similar  depots  or  coaling  stations  in  the  Pacific  Ocean,  more 
particularly  in  the  Bismarck  Archipelago,  in  Samoa,  on  the 
Carolines,  and  on  the  Marshall  Islands.  The  possession  of 
Kiao-chau  has  enabled  a  German  company  to  build  a  railroad 
to  the  wonderfully  productive  mines  of  splendid  hard  coal  in 
Wei  Hseen,  and  she  counts  on  supplying  in  the  near  future  not 
only  her  own  ships,  merchant  and  naval,  with  this  coal,  but 
also  all  the  other  nationalities  that  have  need  for  it.  She  will 
have  a  virtual  monopoly  in  that  line  along  the  whole  coast  of 
China,  at  least  until  some  more  good  coal  mines  are  opened  up  by 
other  enterprising  nations  having  large  interests  in  China. 

Having  thus  outlined  the  resources  and  present  status  of  the 
leading  German  steamer  lines,  and  also  the  extent  of  German 
shipping,  it  is  needful  to  say  a  few  words  about  the  principal 
German  shipyards,  their  humble  origin,  and  their  present  ca- 
pacity. Along  the  coasts  of  the  North  Sea  and  of  the  Baltic, 
Germany  has  now  about  a  score  of  shipyards,  of  which  six  or 
seven  are  of  large  size  and  high  efficiency,  while  the  others  are 
of  medium  capacity.  The  small  ones,  numbering  about  150, 
are  here  left  unconsidered. 

The  Vulcan  Works  near  Stettin  are  the  largest  and  in  a  sense 
the  most  efficient.  They  have  been  in  existence  fifty-one  years, 
but  for  a  long  time  the  building  of  locomotives  and  other  ma- 
chinery  was  the  leading  feature.  They  have  built  and  sold 
some  2.000  locomotives.  It  was  with  the  rise  of  Germany  as  a 
seafaring  and  naval  power  that  the  Vulcan  gradually  developed 
as  a  constructor  of  large  and  fine  vessels.  From  the  start  the 
German  government,  recognizing  the  disadvantages  and  dangers 


SHIPPING  145 

of  relying  on  a  foreign  country  in  the  building  of  vessels,  both 
for  the  navy  and  merchant  marine,  systematically  set  to  work 
to  emancipate  itself  from  this  state -of  dependence.  It  was  up- 
hill work,  of  course,  and  it  was  only  within  the  past  two  years 
that  the  end  was  fully  attained.  During  its  chrysalis  condition 
German  shipping  was  largely  dependent  on  British  yards.  In 
1870  the  Vulcan  was  still  insignificant  when  compared  with  its 
older,  more  experienced  and  much  wealthier  rivals  across  the 
Channel.  Since  its  inception,  the  works  have  been  enlarged 
fifteenfold,  and  its  capital  has  increased  from  $500,000  to 
$7,500,000.  The  works  cover  now  nearly  100  acres,  and  the 
number  of  its  toilers  has  risen  to  over  8,000. 

The  Vulcan  began  the  construction  of  its  first  naval  vessels 
in  1866,  for  the  then  North  German  Confederation,  but  these 
were  all  of  small  size,  and  it  was  not  until  1869  that  it  constructed 
the  first  large-sized  machinery  for  the  iron-clad  Hansa.  In  the 
following  year,  1870,  during  the  war  with  France,  the  Vulcan  had 
increased  its  capacity  and  efficiency  to  the  point  of  being 
able  to  solicit  and  execute  an  order  for  a  large  iron-clad,  the 
Preussen,  that  being  one  of  the  first  new  vessels  to  enter  the 
newly  formed  imperial  German  navy.  Altogether,  the  Vulcan 
has  built  250  large  vessels — of  which  sixty-two  were  for  either 
the  German  or  foreign  navies.  The  rest  were  merchant  marine 
steamers. 

Among  the  men-of-war  built  for  Germany  there  were  the  bat- 
tleships Brandenburg  and  Weissenburg,  each  of  10,500  tons,  and 
which  are  among  the  finest  in  the  German  navy.  They  are  now 
building  a  larger  one  for  Germany  of  1 1 ,700  tons.  For  the  trans- 
atlantic fleet  of  the  North  German  Lloyd  the  Vulcan  has  built 
such  leviathans  of  acknowledged  speed  and  efficiency  as  the 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  der  Grosse,  of  14,500  tons;  the  Friedrich  der 
Grosse,  of  10,500  tons;  the  Konigin  Louise  and  the  Konig  Albert, 
of  similar  capacity;  the  Prinzess  Irene,  of  11,000  tons;  and  the 
Kronprinz  Wilhelm,  of  15,000  tons.  For  the  Lloyd  the  Vulcan 
has  now  a  ship  in  construction  which  will  be  named  the  Kaiser 
Wilhelm  II,  and  which  will  overtop  all  previous  efforts  of  any 
steamer  line  or  shipyard  in  the  world.  It  is  706  feet  in  length, 
and  of  20,000  register  tons;  its  machinery  will  be  42,000  horse- 
power. This  vessel,  just  launched,  will  begin  its  trips  to  New 


146  GERMANY 

York  next  spring.  It  is  expected  to  reduce  the  duration  of  the 
journey  to  an  even  five  days,  or  less. 

For  the  Hamburg-America  Line  the  Vulcan  has,  amongst 
others,  built  the  Fuerst  Bismarck,  the  Patricia,  of  13,293  tons; 
the  Hamburg,  of  10,599  tons;  the  Deutschland,  of  16,500  tons 
and  of  36,000  horsepower,  and  the  Kiao-chau,  of  n  ,000  tons. 

Thus,  then,  the  Vulcan  has  successively  and  within  the  space 
of  a  few  years  constructed  the  largest  and  fastest,  the  best  and 
the  most  luxuriously  equipped  steamers  afloat,  and  this  unde- 
niable fact  speaks,  of  course,  for  itself. 

For  the  Chinese  navy  the  Vulcan  has  built  more  than  one-half 
of  all  its  vessels,  and  it  has  also  built  a  number  of  the  most  effi- 
cient Russian,  Greek,  Japanese,  and  other  foreign  naval  vessels. 

Next  to  the  Vulcan  in  size  are  the  Schichau  Works,  which 
originally  were  started  in  a  small  way  in  Elbing,  a  town  of  me- 
dium size  to  the  east  of  the  Baltic  shore.  In  1891  the  firm 
enlarged  its  capacity  greatly  by  founding  a  vast  shipyard  in  the 
large  harbour  city  of  Dantzic,  and  it  has  besides  extensive  repair 
shops  in  Pillau,  likewise  on  the  Baltic  coast.  Altogether,  they 
have  now  some  7,000  men  in  their  employ,  and  a  technical  corps 
of  1 8 1 ,  with  their  central  offices  in  Elbing. 

The  Schichau  Works'  specialty  is  torpedo  boats.  Of  the  800 
sea  and  river  steamers  built  by  them,  no  less  than  300  were 
torpedo  boats.  They  have  sold  these  both  to  the  German  navy 
and  to  the  navies  of  Russia,  Austria,  China,  Chile,  Italy,  Brazil, 
Argentina,  Turkey  and  the  United  States.  Their  torpedo  boats 
of  recent  build  have  achieved  as  high  a  speed  as  the  best  English 
ones,  with  a  maximum  of  36.7  knots. 

The  firm  of  Blohm  &  Voss  in  Hamburg  is  third  in  size  and  im- 
portance amongst  the  private  shipbuilders  of  the  empire.  This 
firm  has  now  been  in  existence  twenty-five  years,  and  has  con- 
structed in  that  time  no  less  than  153  large  vessels,  of  which  sixty- 
seven  alone  had  a  joint  capacity  of  200,000  tons  and  160,000  horse- 
power. They  have  now  in  construction  one  large  iron-clad 
battleship  and  one  large  iron-clad  cruiser  for  the  German  navy, 
and  ten  big  steamers,  whereof  two  of  unusual  size  are  for  the 
Hamburg- America  Line.  The  firm  has  5,000  men  in  its  employ, 
and  is  now  in  condition  to  construct  vessels  of  any  size,  both  for 
warlike  and  peaceful  purposes. 


SHIPPING  147 

There  is  also  the  large  shipbuilding  firm  of  Tecklenburg  in 
Vegesack,  and  the  Germania  in  Geestemiinde,  but  far  larger  is 
the  other  Germania  yard  in  Kiel,  owned  by  Friedrich  Krupp, 
and  recently  enlarged  enormously,  so  that  his  works  there  oc- 
cupy all  told  some  120  acres,  with  about  4,000  workmen.  This 
branch  of  the  big  Krupp  firm  is  very  young,  hardly  more  than 
five  years,  but  it  promises  to  rival  the  older  yards  within  a  very 
short  time.  Certainly,  the  fact  that  the  German  government 
has  given  this  Krupp  Germania  Works  in  Kiel  recent  orders  for 
the  construction  of  several  large  naval  ships  of  the  line  as  well 
as  cruisers,  and  that  the  firm  is  going  to  turn  these  out  withir 
eighteen  months,  speaks  favourably  for  its  capacity. 

Of  course,  in  this  survey  the  large  imperial  navy  yard  in 
Kiel  and  the  smaller  one  in  Wilhelmshaven  must  not  be  forgotten. 
The  one  in  Kiel  employs  at  present,  during  the  "rush  times"  in- 
duced by  the  strong  desire  to  complete  as  soon  as  possible  the 
makeup  of  the  new  and  powerful  fleet  which  Germany  is  enabled 
to  build  up  under  the  operation  of  her  naval  act  of  1898,  and 
complemented  by  the  amendment  of  1900,  some  8,000  men,  and 
there  are  now  in  process  of  construction  there  some  seventy-two 
vessels,  large  and  small.  The  technical  outfit  of  this  Imperial 
Navy  Yard  in  Kiel  is  spoken  of  in  enthusiastic  terms  by  American 
experts  who  enjoyed  the  greatly  coveted  opportunity  of  viewing 
and  inspecting  it  in  its  essential  parts  not  long  ago.  The  navy 
yard  in  Wilhelmshaven  is  much  more  circumscribed  in  size  and 
capacity,  and  is  largely  used  for  repairing.  The  small  im- 
perial navy  yard  in  Dantzic  does  not  amount  to  a  great  deal, 
either,  so  far  as  the  construction  of  good-sized  new  vessels  is  con- 
cerned. 

From  the  above  it  will  be  clearly  apprehended  that  Germany 
as  a  seafaring  and  naval  power,  has  nearly  reached  the  goal  o 
her  ambition.  She  has  now  enough  well-appointed  shipyards  in 
her  territory  to  enable  her  to  build  and  equip,  repair  and  alter, 
all  the  ships  she  needs;  nay,  more,  she  has  seriously  set  out  as  a 
competitor  with  England  in  the  building  and  repairing  of  foreign 
vessels  as  well.  She  must  hereafter  be  reckoned  with  as  one  of 
the  most  serious  and  formidable  factors  in  this  respect. 


THE    ARMY 

ONE  of  the  most  striking  features  of  German  life  is  the  pres- 
ence everywhere  of  the  regular  soldiery  and  the  great  place  the 
army  holds  in  the  thoughts  and  affections  of  the  nation.  Neat 
and  tidy  in  appearance,  you  will  see  in  every  town  officers  strut- 
ting the  streets  with  a  look  of  conscious  dignity,  jingling  their 
spurs  and  clanking  their  sabres.  In  conversation,  too,  reference 
is  often  made  to  the  drills  and  parades  and  other  military  spec- 
tacles, or  to  some  more  serious  question  affecting  the  army. 
The  average  German — and  most  of  all  the  Prussian — speaks 
with  a  certain  affectionate  pride  and  confidence  of  the  army, 
and  every  change,  even  the  slightest,  made  in  it,  every  promo- 
tion or  retirement  among  the  higher-grade  officers,  is  commented 
upon  with  evident  interest.  At  longer  intervals,  radical  changes 
that  are  proposed  cause  an  intensity  of  discussion  which,  I  think, 
is  unparalleled  elsewhere.  When,  a  few  years  ago,  the  period 
of  actual  military  service  was,  after  long  debates  in  the  Reichstag, 
finally  reduced  from  three  to  two  years  for  the  infantry,  this 
step — whose  far-reaching  importance  no  military  man  will, 
of  course,  underrate — formed  for  a  long  time  the  daily  conversa- 
tion at  every  German  fireside.  During  the  first  eight  years  of 
the  present  Emperor's  reign,  nothing  contributed  so  much  to  his 
unpopularity  as  his  famous  "rejuvenation"  of  the  army — i.  e.,  the 
systematic  process  of  gradually  retiring  nearly  every  one  of  the 
older  generals  and  regimental  commanders.  Chamberlain's  incon- 
siderate strictures  on  the  methods  employed  by  the  Germans 
during  the  war  in  France,  in  1870-71,  which  he  made  the 
past  winter,  occasioned  an  outbreak  of  fury  throughout  the  em- 
pire which  astonished  no  one  so  much  as  Chamberlain  himself. 
His  remarks  were  considered  in  Germany  in  the  light  of  a  deliber- 
ate and  unjustified  insult  hurled  at  that  noli-me-tangere ,  the 
German  army.  On  that  point  every  German  is  extremely  sen- 

148 


THE  ARMY  *49 

sitive.  The  daily  press  in  Germany,  while  often  ignoring  po- 
litical topics  that  seem  to  touch  the  masses  more  closely,  is  for- 
ever devoting  much  space  and  time  to  a  discussion  of  the  different 
phases  of  army  life,  and  their  readers  demand  this. 

It  is  at  first  difficult  for  an  American  or  Englishman  to  under- 
stand this.  With  them  the  army,  certainly  in  times  of  peace,  is 
about  the  last  subject  that  would  be  likely  to  be  discussed  in 
general  conversation,  and  no  great  interest  is  evinced  by  the 
great  public  in  details  of  army  management.  But  a  little  re- 
flection will  show  how  natural  it  is  for  the  German  to  feel  so 
keenly  about  his  army  and  about  all  that  stands  in  any  relation 
to  it.  For  nowhere  else  in  the  world  is  the  army  so  much  identi- 
fied with  the  nation,  and  nowhere  else  is  respect  and  tender  re- 
gard for  the  army  so  deep-seated  and  general.  It  was  due  to  the 
popular  uprising  of  1813,  through  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Germany,  to  "a  people  in  arms,"  in  fact,  that  the  yoke  of  the 
first  Napoleon,  which  had  rested  for  a  decade  so  heavily  on  the 
German  neck,  was  finally  thrown  off.  And  when  the  great 
Corsican  had  been  sent  off  to  St.  Helena,  there  on  its  rocks  to 
gnaw  out  his  heart,  the  old  mediaeval  conception  of  the  soldier 
as  a  mercenary  was  buried  in  Prussia  forever.  Instead,  those 
great  military  organizers,  Scharnhorst  and  Gneisenau,  shaped 
the  military  system  on  the  broad  plan  of  general  and  compulsory 
service.  Every  strong  and  healthy  young  man,  whether  of  high 
lineage  or  low  birth,  was  to  bear  arms  for  his  country  during  a 
term  of  years,  and  subsequently  to  be  enrolled  in  the  subsidiary 
bodies  for  national  defense — the  reserve,  the  landwehr,  and  the 
landsturm,  until  the  completed  forty-fifth  year.  That  was 
their  novel  scheme,  and  they  carried  it  out  practically.  This 
system  of  virtually  making  army  and  nation  synonymous  terms 
has  endured,  with  slight  modifications,  to  this  day,  and  has  since 
been  adopted  by  France  and  other  powers  as  well. 

In  a  country  like  Germany,  where  every  father  sends  his  sons 
to  military  service,  and  where  almost  every  maiden  has  a  soldier 
for  a  sweetheart,  it  is  but  natural  that  the  thoughts  and  longings 
of  the  nation  gravitate  toward  the  army.  This  is  truest  in 
Prussia,  for  that  country  undeniably  owes  its  rise  to  power  and 
its  present  dominating  position  in  the  empire  to  its  army  insti- 
tutions, whereas  the  rest  of  Germany  adopted  these  institutions 


150  GERMANY 

only  since  1866.  In  Prussia  the  profession  of  arms  is  looked 
upon  as  the  most  honourable  and  glorious  of  all.  The  Prussian 
kings  have  ever  emphasized  this  estimate  on  all  public  occasions, 
and  the  "king's  coat,"  or  uniform,  is  to-day  considered  on 
Prussian  soil  as  the  proudest  badge  indeed. 

The  German  army  officer  deserves  to  be  specially  discussed. 
He  holds  throughout  the  empire  the  most  enviable  position  in  the 
eye  s  of  the  masses.  Socially  he  ranks  first.  This  is  often  carried 
to  ludicrous  extremes.  A  simple  beardless  lieutenant  of  twenty 
has,  at  all  social  gatherings,  the  social  precedence  over  the  vener- 
able greybeard  of  a  millionaire  banker,  of  a  distinguished  scholar 
or  scientist,  or  any  other  sort  of  government  official,  merely  on 
the  strength  of  the  uniform  he  wears.  The  fashionable  German 
hostess  will  not  mourn  deeply  if  a  score  of  celebrated  professors 
or  a  half-dozen  of  real  "privy  councillors"  do  not  put  in  their 
appearance  at  her  five-o'clock  tea  or  her  soiree  dansante,  but  she 
will  shed  tears  in  secret  if  only  one  of  the  lieutenants  she  expected 
fails  to  come.  Naturally,  the  officer  is  not  slow  in  using  his 
advantages.  He  has,  if  of  fairly  distinguished  family,  untar- 
nished reputation,  and  an  average  share  of  good  looks,  practically 
the  pick  of  all  the  good  things  in  life.  Above  all,  he  rules  the 
matrimonial  market.  Penniless  officers  of  the  kind  spoken  of 
above  find  no  difficulty  in  securing  life  partners  with  big  for- 
tunes. The  pursuit  and  capture  of  this  sort  of  game  is  technically 
known  among  army  officers  as  "catching  a  goldfish."  A  hand- 
some youth  of  respectable  family,  afflicted  with  a  deficiency  in 
money,  cannot  do  better  in  Germany  than  to  enter  the  army, 
after  a  few  years  spent  in  preliminaries  at  any  one  of  the  military 
academics,  a  lieutenant  at  twenty.  He  will  from  that  hour  on 
have  his  unlimited  choice  of  all  the  marriageable  young  ladies 
that  cross  his  horizon.  He  will,  of  course,  take  his  time  about  it, 
and  usually  first  devote  himself,  for  the  space  of  ten  or  fifteen 
years,  to  the  pleasant  task  of  accumulating  the  average  load  of 
personal  debts.  But  the  usurers  having  at  last  become  fractious 
and  unmanageable,  the  handsome  officer,  meanwhile  promoted 
first  lieutenant,  captain,  or,  perhaps,  even  major,  will  make  his 
choice  deliberately.  It  is  the  father-in-law's  invariable  privilege 
to  settle  the  aforesaid  debts — American  and  English  fathers-in- 
law  of  German  army  officers  bear  the  reputation  of  being  some- 


THE   ARMY  151 

times  rather  backward  in  fulfilling  this  "duty" — and  to  furnish 
his  daughter  with  a  "respectable"  dowry.  The  size  of  the  latter 
will  depend,  of  course,  on  all  sorts  of  circumstances,  such  as  the 
rank  and  the  family  connections  of  the  fiance,  etc.  It  may,  and 
frequently  does,  run  up  into  the  hundreds  of  thousands,  but  it 
cannot  fall  below  a  minimum  which  the  government  itself  has 
fixed.  This  minimum  is  lower  for  officers  of  the  line  than  for 
those  in  the  guards,  lower  for  infantry  than  for  cavalry.  But  in 
any  case  a  sum,  which  is  called  a  marriage  "Kaution,"  must  be 
converted  into  safe  government  bonds,  bearing  interest  at  the 
rate  of  three  or  three  and  a  half  per  cent.,  and  then  placed  in 
seme  moneyed  institution  specially  designated  for  the  purpose, 
where  it  is  at  all  times  subject  to  the  control  and  inspection  of 
the  army  officials.  The  smallest  "Kaution"  amounts  to  about 
$10,000,  and  its  interest,  together  with  the  meagre  pay  of  the 
officer  himself,  is  supposed  to  enable  the  latter  with  his  family 
to  make  both  ends  meet,  with  rigid  economy  and  frequent 
presents  from  the  inexhaustible  purse  of  the  wealthy  father-in- 
law,  who  is  never  supposed  to  grumble  at  this  slightly  one-sided 
arrangement,  but  on  the  contrary  expected  to  always  cheerfully 
contribute,  at  all  crucial  moments  of  the  young  couple's  existence, 
to  the  latter 's  exchequer.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  German 
father-in-law  at  least  knows  his  part  too  well  to  ever  become 
obstreperous. 

This  whole  matter  is  conducted  strictly  on  a  business  basis, 
without  reserve  or  sentimentality  on  either  side.  The  fortunate 
young  woman  on  whom  the  handsome  officer's  choice  has  fallen 
knows  about  the  transactions,  which  sometimes  require  con- 
siderable time,  in  a  general  way,  but  she  is  usually  spared  the 
details.  The  matter  is  spoken  of  in  family  circles  and  in  general 
society  as  any  other  fact  established  by  the  inscrutable  ways  of 
Providence  would  be.  As  a  rule,  officers,  no  matter  how  young 
and  unsophisticated  otherwise,  display  great  talent  in  ascertain- 
ing the  exact  size  of  the  dots  fathers  are  known  to  hold  ready  in 
the  event  of  a  union  of  their  daughters  with  an  officer.  If  the 
amount  appears  insufficient  to  one  officer,  he  will  leave  the  track 
clear  for  a  comrade  whose  expectations  do  not  run  so  high.  An 
impecunious  officer  serving  in  a  crack  regiment,  say  in  Berlin  or 
Potsdam,  requires  with  his  bride  a  marriage  portion  of  at  least 


152  GERMANY 

500,000  to  1,000,000  marks.  He  will  wait  a  reasonable  time 
until  he  meets  and  conquers  such  a  girl  or  widow,  If,  however, 
he  is  gradually  getting  into  the  sere  and  yellow  leaf  with  his  hopes 
still  unrealized,  he  may  lower  his  estimate,  and  then  he  has  him- 
self transferred  to  a  provincial  regiment,  where  less  money  goes 
further. 

Occasionally  the  "goldfish  hunter"  is  unable,  despite  all  his 
cunning  and  all  his  social  and  official  sources  of  information,  to 
determine  the  exact  amount  of  the  dot  held  in  store.  Then  he 
will  have  recourse  to  one  of  those  astute  agents  or  brocanteurs  de 
mariage  swarming  in  large  German  cities.  If  that  fails  as  well, 
he  will  seize  both  horns  of  the  dilemma,  request  a  private  inter- 
view with  his  prospective  father-in-law,  and  unmask  his  bat- 
teries, so  to  speak.  He  will,  in  plain  but  respectful  language,  tell 
that  worthy  that  he  has  met  and  learned  to  appreciate  his  daugh- 
ter Gretchen;  that  he  would  like  to  marry  her,  believing  that  a 
certain  amount  of  mutual  regard  exists,  but  that,  unfortunately, 
he  himself  is  penniless;  that,  therefore,  the  girl  he  marries  must 
have  a  certain  amount  of  money;  that  he,  under  all  these  circum- 
stances, would  deem  it  a  great  favour  if  Herr  .  .  .  would 
kindly  divulge  to  him  the  precise  amount  of  money  he  is  able  and 
willing  to  settle  on  his  daughter  Gretchen,  together  with  any 
other  cognate  information  he  is  willing  to  vouchsafe — all  this, 
of  course,  in  confidence.  The  future  father-in-law  will  there- 
upon tell  the  truth,  and  whether  the  amount  mentioned  was 
large  enough  for  the  young  officer's  needs  will  soon  be  seen,  for 
if  his  attentions  to  Gretchen  do  not  abruptly  terminate  after 
that  interview  it  is  proof  positive  that  it  was. 

"Goldfishes"  are  not  so  very  plentiful  in  a  country  like 
Germany,  and  so  it  has  happened  that  the  foreign  "goldfishes," 
American  or  English  preferred,  are  also  hunted  to  some  extent. 
There  are  to-day  to  be  found  in  every  garrison  town  in  the  em- 
pire numbers  of  American  or  English  women  married  to  German 
officers,  and  often  playing  a  conspicuous  social  role.  Their 
special  delight  is  going  to  court,  even  if  it  be  only  a  tiny  one 
like  the  courts  at  Strelitz,  Weimar,  Coburg,  or  Schaumburg, 
where  an  income  of  6,000  marks  is  held  semi-royal,  and  where 
weak  punch  is  about  the  height  of  dissipation  indulged  in  at  the 
winter  functions.  Curiously  enough,  as  a  matter  of  fact  these 


THE   ARMY  153 

pseudo-Germans  of  American  or  English  birth  and  education 
take  as  a  rule  an  even  intenser  joy  than  do  the  native  German 
ladies  in  the  ridiculous  and  inane  court  intrigues  and  cabals 
that  form  the  chief  occupation  of  those  admitted  to  these 
Lilliputian  mockeries  of  royalty.  At  the  duodecimo  edition  of 
a  capital  where  one  of  the  German  Emperor's  sisters,  Princess 
Victoria,  is  holding  dread  sway  over  her  few  subjects  of 
Schaumburg-Lippe,  the  American  wife  of  a  German  official  is 
noted  for  her  eagerness  in  attending.  And  her  case  is  but  one 
of  many  that  could  be  mentioned. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  think,  as  so  many  American  editors  and 
others  do,  that  these  American  ladies  married  in  Germany  live 
unhappily  and  are  pining  away  in  vain  sighs  for  a  good  scream 
of  the  American  eagle.  With  very  few  exceptions,  they  have 
there  found  the  life  they  wanted,  and  are  thoroughly  happy 
and  contented.  The  American  women  are  more  adaptable  and 
of  nimbler  intelligence  than  their  English  sisters,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence they  more  quickly  learn  to  feel  at  home  in  their  new  sur- 
roundings and  thus  become  more  popular  and  socially  influential. 
But  this  influence  has  altered  in  nothing  the  peculiar  code  of 
honor  held  by  the  German  army  officer,  including  his  firm  be- 
lief in  the  duel  as  an  ultima  ratio  in  private  affairs. 

The  number  of  duels  fought  in  the  army  is  steadily  but  slowly 
decreasing.  But  the  duel  as  a  fixed  institution  remains.  In 
Germany,  duels,  both  inside  and  outside  the  army,  are  usually 
not  such  trifling  affairs  as  in  France.  The  German  thorough- 
ness betrays  itself  even  there.  Many  of  the  most  promising 
younger  officers  have  fallen  on  this  field  of  mistaken  honour.  It 
would  cost  the  Kaiser  but  a  word  to  drive  the  duel  out  of  the 
army  forever,  and  with  its  disappearance  from  there  it  would 
also  quickly  die  out  in  civilian  circles.  But  the  Kaiser  is  un- 
willing to  say  that  word,  as  his  earlier  education  in  the  army  has 
made  him  share  the  same  set  of  prejudices  on  which  the  army 
code  is  largely  built.  That  is  why  he  uses  only  palliatives  and 
half-measures  in  fighting  the  evil,  or  rather  what  he  considers 
its  excrescences.  His  decree,  issued  a  few  years  ago,  has  merely 
a  tendency  to  diminish  the  number  of  victims. 

One  of  the  strange  ideas  held  by  the  German  army  officer,  as 
part  of  his  professional  code,  was  picturesquely  illustrated  by  the 


iS4  GERMANY 

Briisewitz  tragedy.  That  officer,  being  somewhat  roughly 
jostled  by  a  half-drunken  plumber,  in  a  miscellaneous  crowd  that 
sat  back  of  him  in  a  cafe"  at  Carlsruhe,  followed  the  offender 
out  of  the  place  and  ran  his  sword  through  his  body,  killing 
the  man  on  the  spot.  In  doing  this,  Lieutenant  von  Briisewitz 
had  acted  in  strict  accordance  with  the  code  of  honour  valid  to 
this  day  in  the  German  army.  For  the  offender,  being  of  too  low 
a  social  caste  to  be  admitted  to  the  privilege  of  a  duello  with  an 
army  officer,  had  to  be  killed,  so  that  his  blood  would  wash  away 
the  dark  stain  made  on  the  officer's  escutcheon  by  the  affront 
offered.  His  procedure,  cowardly  as  it  seemed  to  the  world 
at  large — for  it  was  the  slaying  of  an  unarmed  and  at  the  mo- 
ment defenseless  man — was  perfectly  en  regie,  viewed  from  the 
German  army  officer's  habitual  point,  and  that  accounts,  of 
course,  for  the  fact  that  the  court  martial  sentenced  him  to  but 
a  few  years  of  mild  incarceration. 

Briisewitz  had,  however,  some  conscience  left,  and  his  deed 
weighed  heavily  on  his  soul.  He  sought  and  found  a  sovereign 
remedy;  he  enlisted  as  a  volunteer  on  the  Boer  side,  soon  after 
the  outbreak  of  the  war  in  South  Africa.  The  reports  all  agree 
t  hat  he  conducted  himself  in  an  exemplary  manner,  dying 
M'entually  the  death  of  a  brave  man  on  the  battlefield.  His 
body  was  found  on  the  veldt,  and  later  conveyed  home  to 
Germany.  The  military  press  commented  widely  on  his 
oxpiatory  death,  and  he  was  generally  represented  as  a  victim 
of  unfortunate  circumstances. 

The  Briisewitz  case,  on  account  of  its  dramatic  and  unusual 
t  fixtures,  occasioned  world-wide  interest.  It  was,  however,  but 
vime  of  many  that  have  happened,  and  are  still  happening,  in 
Germany.  A  couple  of  years  ago,  for  instance,  there  was  an 
occurrence  in  the  old  city  of  Konigsberg,  close  to  the  borders  of 
Russia,  which  in  some  of  its  details  was  more  atrocious  than  the 
Briisewitz  case.  A  group  of  officers,  slightly  under  the  influence 
of  liquor,  encountered  on  the  street,  late  at  night,  several  civil- 
ians. These  citizens,  too,  were  not  quite  sobre,  and  one  of  them, 
whether  purposely  or  by  accident,  stumbled  against  one  of  the 
officers.  The  latter  immediately  drew  his  sword  and  stabbed  the 
offender  twice,  wounding  him  dangerously.  The  other  citizen 
meanwhile  had  vainly  attempted  to  prevent  this  outrage  by 


THE  ARMY  155 

grasping  hold  of  the  officer's  arm.  Thereupon  the  other  officers 
tore  their  weapons  from  their  scabbards  and  inflicted  such  in- 
juries on  the  would-be  peacemaker  as  to  cause  his  death  a  few 
days  later.  As  in  the  case  of  Briisewitz,  no  very  severe  punish- 
ment was  meted  out  to  them,  although  a  number  of  the  most 
influential  newspapers  had  demanded  adequate  retribution,  and 
the  Kaiser  subsequently  remitted  part  of  the  sentence. 

Such  cases  and  the  dueling  habit  are  among  the  unhealthy 
growths  on  a  code  of  honour  which  in  many  other  respects  em- 
bodies a  high  standard  of  ethics.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that, 
viewing  them  as  a  body,  the  German  army  officers  are  men  of  the 
highest  integrity  and  of  charming  manners.  They  are  deservedly 
popular  in  German  social  life.  No  gathering  in  the  upper  strata 
of  German  society  is  complete  or  fully  enjoyable  without  at 
least  one  or  two  representatives  of  the  army.  The  corps  used  to 
recruit  itself  very  largely  from  the  nobility,  and  this  is  still  true 
to  a  certain  extent.  There  is,  all  over  Germany,  a  part  of  the 
nobility  specially  designated  as  the  "Militaradel,"  owing  to  the 
members  serving  their  sovereign  and  country,  generation  after 
generation,  as  officers  in  the  army.  From  this  section  of  the 
aristocracy  have  sprung  perhaps  the  majority  of  successful  sol- 
diers. But  the  size  of  the  German  army  on  a  peace  footing  has 
more  than  doubled  since  1870,  and  thus  it  has  been  found  neces- 
sary to  admit  as  officers  an  increasingly  higher  percentage  of  men 
drawn  from  the  middle  classes.  These  now  form  considerably 
more  than  half  the  total  number,  and  that,  it  is  interesting  to 
note,  is  gradually  altering  the  character  of  the  whole  corps.  It 
will  not  be  many  years  hence  when  this  change  will  become  more 
apparent.  There  is,  however,  one  whole  class  of  the  population 
which  is  still  rigourously  excluded  from  the  body  of  active  officers 
in  the  army,  namely,  the  Jews.  The  German  constitution  recog- 
nizes no  such  invidious  distinction,  and  the  Liberal  factions  in 
the  Reichstag  annually  take  the  army  administration,  and  that 
indirectly  means  the  Kaiser  as  well,  to  task  for  consistently  dis- 
criminating against  the  Germans  of  Hebrew  race  or  faith ;  but  all 
to  no  purpose.  The  Jewish  press  of  Germany  has,  now  and  then, 
pointed  to  the  large  number  of  German  soldiers  of  the  Hebrew 
race  who  signally  distinguished  themselves  during  the  Franco- 
German  war,  among  them  being  a  long  list  of  men  who  received 


156  GERMANY 

the  highest  decoration  for  bravery,  viz.,  the  iron  cross,  and  the 
German  army  surgeons  are,  I  believe,  in  their  majority,  Jews. 
There  is  nevertheless  a  strong  prejudice  in  the  army  itself,  and  in 
government  circles,  including  the  Emperor,  against  the  appoint- 
ment of  Jews  as  field  officers,  and  on  various  occasions,  when  in 
exceptional  cases  young  Jews  had  presented  themselves  for  ad- 
mission in  certain  regiments  as  officers,  they  have  been  black- 
balled by  the  corps,  and  thus  effectually  excluded. 

While  according  all  due  praise  to  the  German  army  officers  as  a 
body  of  men  showing  a  number  of  sterling  qualities,  it  must  be 
conceded  that  in  several  important  respects  their  influence  on 
national  life  is  not  wholesome.  By  their  entire  training,  their 
traditions,  their  social  and  professional  surroundings,  but  above 
all  by  their  peculiar  ethics,  they  form  a  body  apart,  which  does 
not  usually  amalgamate  with  the  ideas  and  aims,  still  less  with 
the  customs  and  convictions,  of  the  population  as  a  whole.  This 
spirit  of  separatism,  which  from  the  monarchic  point  of  view  may 
be  deemed  desirable,  militates  against  the  democratization  of  the 
army.  It  brings  it  about  that  the  officer  on  his  part  as  a  rule 
does  not  share  those  sentiments  which  for  the  time  lie  uppermost 
in  the  breast  of  the  nation,  but  makes  him  stand  aside,  an  indif- 
ferent spectator.  It  also  brings  it  about  that  every  now  and 
then  some  typical  event  in  army  circles  is  pointed  out  by  the  more 
enlightened  and  progressive  part  of  the  German  press  to  be  in 
direct  contravention  to  the  convictions  of  the  civilian  population. 

Life  in  the  German  army,  though  by  no  means  as  luxurious  as 
in  the  English  crack  regiments,  has  ceased  to  be  frugal  and  simple, 
such  as  it  was  before  1870.  Gaming  is  much  indulged  in,  and  a 
large  number  of  the  tragedies  acted  within  army  circles  is  caused 
by  it  every  year.  Racing  and  betting  and  the  most  expensive 
forms  of  sport  are  also  much  followed.  The  Union  Club  and  the 
Jockey  Club  in  Berlin,  both  largely  composed  of  officers  belong- 
ing to  the  guard  corps,  and  of  whom  the  majority  are  scions  of 
the  leading  aristocratic  families,  are  perhaps  the  worst  centres  of 
fashionable  dissipation  in  the  empire.  During  the  winter 
"hazard"  games,  such  as  vingt-et-un,  lansquenet,  ecarte,  baccarat, 
and,  of  late,  poker,  are  played,  often  for  very  high  stakes.  Tens  of 
thousands  change  hands  at  one  table  in  a  single  night,  and  on 
the  turn  of  one  card  frequently  depends  a  small  fortune.  In  the 


THE  ARMY  157 

summer-time,  outdoor  sports  and  the  betting  on  their  results 
engross  the  members.  It  is  at  these  clubs,  and  at  hundreds  of 
smaller  ones  in  the  provinces,  that  the  fatal  taste  for  gaming  and 
betting  is  first  acquired  by  the  young  sprigs  of  nobility,  who  sub- 
sequently "go  to  the  bad."  The  complete  financial  ruin  of  five 
of  the  oldest  and  most  renowned  Prussian  noble  families  was 
accomplished  at  one  of  the  above  clubs  in  the  course  of  a  single 
season,  not  many  years  ago.  It  was  from  there  that  the  coterie 
later  known  as  the  Club  der  Harmlosen,  or  Club  of  Innocents, 
first  graduated.  One  of  its  most  noted  victims  was  a  young 
grandson  of  Queen  Victoria,  the  late  heir-apparent  of  the  Duchy 
of  Coburg,  young  Prince  Alfred.  Thoroughly  debauched  at 
these  clubs,  he  died  a  miserable  death  soon  after.  The  picture 
of  incessant  and  disgusting  dissipation  which  these  "  Innocents" 
presented,  when  a  number  of  high-life  scandals  came  to  be  venti- 
lated in  the  Berlin  courts,  was  shocking  enough  to  stir  the  public 
conscience,  and  for  months  the  German  press  of  every  shade  of 
opinion  was  ringing  with  the  general  indignation  felt  at  the  hor- 
rible details  brought  out  at  the  several  trials.  One  of  the 
Kaiser's  personal  aides-de-camp  was  implicated,  and  the  attend- 
ant disgrace  led  to  his  retirement  from  the  army,  as  well  as  that 
of  a  score  of  other  young  officers. 

One  of  the  most  dangerous  features  of  fashionable  club  life  in 
the  German  army  is  what  is  called  playing  "on  parole" — i.  e., 
without  visible  stakes,  solely  on  notes  of  hand  or  word  of  mouth. 
The  iron-clad  custom  is  to  redeem  these  bits  of  paper  within 
twenty-four  hours,  on  pain  of  dishonour  or  exposure.  This  is  one 
of  the  most  prolific  causes  of  suicide  among  the  young  and  reckless 
but  otherwise  promising  officers.  One  of  the  favourite  forms 
this  ending  to  a  brief  season  of  dissipation  takes  is  the  so-called 
"American  duel."  This  is  about  the  most  senseless  and  un- 
American  invention  of  the  Continental  rake,  and  how  the  legend 
ever  originated  that  this  species  of  suicide  came  from  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic  nobody  seems  able  to  tell. 

The  "army  usurer"  is  another  peculiar  institution  in  Germany. 
This  type  of  vampire  preys  on  the  reckless  and  inexperienced 
young  officers  of  good  family.  The  law  reaches  him  but  seldom, 
for  his  methods  are  cunningly  devised  to  fit  the  needs  and 
prejudices  of  his  victims.  His  customary  procedure  is  about 


158  GERMANY 

this:  By  his  ramified  connections  he  knows  the  precise  financial 
and  moral  status  of  every  officer  in  town.  This  includes  reliable 
information  about  family  relations  and  family  wealth,  regular 
monthly  or  quarterly  allowances  from  home,  habits,  tastes  and 
possible  "entanglements,"  and  so  forth.  With  this  fund  of 
absolute  knowledge  to  start  with,  the  risk  run  by  the  usurer  in 
advancing  money  is  relatively  small.  He  will  first  politely  and 
repeatedly  offer  his  services,  and  this  failing  to  produce  any 
effect,  he  will  bide  his  time  till  the  prospective  victim  is  tem- 
porarily straitened  for  ready  money  owing  to  a  run  of  "bad  luck," 
etc.,  and  then  renew  his  offers  in  a  tempting  form.  The  terms  he 
will  then  make  depend,  of  course,  on  circumstances,  but  he  is 
always  willing  to  "renew,"  at  least  so  long  as  he  thinks  it  will  be 
to  his  eventual  advantage.  The  usury  law  is  gotten  over  by 
having  the  debtor  sign  for  a  larger  amount  than  actually  paid. 
Gradually  the  net  will  become  tighter  and  tighter.  The  loans 
have  grown  larger  and  more  frequent,  and  the  terms  more  un- 
favourable. Finally  the  victim  reaches  the  point  where  desperate 
measures  have  to  be  resorted  to.  That  may  mean  the  relinquish- 
ment  of  his  "golden  bachelor  days"  and  a  "money  marriage," 
or  it  may  mean  a  family  council  at  home,  a  council  called  for  the 
purpose  of  extricating  the  black  sheep  from  the  toils.  In  any 
case,  the  usurer  will  get  his  money  back,  plus  the  enormous  profit 
he  is  sure  to  reap  out  of  the  whole  affair,  a  profit  rising  often  into 
the  hundreds  per  cent.  At  such  a  reckoning  the  officer's  assets 
will  frequently  consist  of  "valuable"  oil  paintings,  hundreds  of 
cases  of  vile  champagne,  etc.,  etc.,  which  the  usurer  made  it  a 
conditio  sine  qua  non  for  his  victim  to  take  as  part  of  his  loans. 
There  may  then  be  a  new  mortgage  on  the  paternal  acres,  or  the 
whole  family  at  home  may  be  obliged  to  skimp  and  save  for  years, 
until  sooner  or  later  there  comes  the  catastrophe — a  bullet, 
resignation  from  the  army,  and  penury,  or,  if  not  before  con- 
cluded, a  "money  marriage."  That  is  the  average  winding  up. 
There  are,  unfortunately,  no  statistics  to  be  had  of  this  phase 
of  army  life,  but  the  percentage  of  officers  who,  through  the 
"friendly  and  timely"  services  of  these  money  sharks,  and 
through  their  own  gullibility  and  recklessness,  of  course,  are  either 
permanently  ruined  for  life  or  else — which  is  not  much  better  and 
Vess  creditable — forced  to  contract  one  of  those  loveless  matri- 


THE  ARMY  159 

monial  unions  which,  based  on  both  sides  on  mercenary  and 
unworthy  motives,  figure  as  a  travesty  on  honest  wedlock,  is 
astoundingly  large  in  these  present  days.  The  whole  army  is 
honeycombed  with  such  cases. 

There  is,  also,  too  much  drinking  and  feasting  in  the  German 
army.  That  is  one  of  the  points  wherein  the  Kaiser  fails  to 
set  a  good  example.  The  regulation  mess  is,  in  most  cases,  not 
extravagant,  but  there  are  too  many  special  occasions  sought 
and  found  when  the  contrary  is  true.  The  main  source  of  evil  in 
this  respect  are  the  so-called  "Liebesmahler,"  or  "love  feasts," 
— anniversary  days  of  battles  in  which  the  regiment,  company, 
or  squadron  figured  conspicuously;  birthday  or  farewell  parties 
given  by  members;  anniversaries  of  the  birth  of  the  Emperor, 
king,  chief  of  the  regiment,  etc.  On  all  such  occasions  the  eat- 
ing and,  more  particularly,  the  drinking  is  beyond  all  reason  and 
good  sense,  and  so,  too  often,  is  the  toasting  and  the  table  talk, 
followed  by  card-playing  for  high  stakes.  The  Kaiser  is  amaz- 
ingly fond  of  these  carousals,  attending  scores  of  them  during 
every  year,  and  a  large  number  of  his  most  extravagant  speeches 
and  remarks  were  made  at  the  wassail  bowl  on  these  occasions, 
when  everybody  was  flushed  with  cheer  and  when  he  was  not 
afraid  of  publicity.  He  has,  however,  been  growing  more  cau- 
tious of  late. 

In  a  word,  the  old-time  Spartan  simplicity  of  life  that  was  one 
of  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  Prussian  officer  during  the  fifty 
years  between  Waterloo  and  Sadowa,  when  he  was  training  for 
his  magnificent  feats  against  Austria  and  France,  has  departed. 
In  too  many  cases  spendthrift  methods  and  riotous  and  luxurious 
living  have  replaced  it.  The  Kaiser  vainly  issues  decrees  and 
orders  against  it.  Every  autumn,  after  the  big  manoeuvres, 
when  the  bulk  of  the  changes  in  the  army — promotions,  re- 
tirements, and  forcible  discharges — are  promulgated,  there  is 
quite  a  number  of  names  of  officers  made  known  whose  dismissal 
has  been  caused  by  profligacy  or  worse.  All  this  does  not  augur 
well  for  the  future,  although  it  would  be  going  too  far  to  say  that 
the  army  spirit,  as  a  whole,  is  already  seriously  affected  by  it. 
Still,  viewing  the  various  tendencies  at  work  within  the  German 
army — and  particularly  the  Prussian  part  of  it — calmly  and 
judiciously,  one  does  find  several  striking  traits  of  similarity  with 


160  GERMANY 

the  period  following  the  death  of  Frederick  the  Great,  and  which 
led  to  the  complete  downfall  of  the  Prussian  military  prestige 
at  Jena.  Prussia  has  not,  so  far,  had  her  Dreyfus  affair,  it  is 
true,  but  there  have  been  noticeable  a  number  of  symptoms  of 
their  kind  nearly  if  not  quite  as  alarming. 

There  is,  however,  one  other  feature  of  the  German  army 
which  usually  escapes  the  observer,  and  yet  which  is  of  great 
moment.  In  1901  the  German  army  cost  the  taxpayer  directly 
a  matter  of  559,000,000  marks,  or,  roughly,  $135,000,000;  of 
this  sum  about  half  was  for  rations  and  pay  of  the  soldiers. 
But  the  indirect  cost  in  this  respect  was  several  times  greater. 
For  the  food  furnished  the  private  soldier  is  coarse  and  not  very 
palatable,  and  the  small  pay — amounting  to  between  six  and 
twelve  cents  a  day — is  entirely  inadequate.  To  make  up  the 
deficiency  the  relatives  and  friends  of  nearly  every  one  of  the 
604,000  private  soldiers  furnish,  out  of  their  scant  means,  ad- 
ditional food  and  money.  Again,  as  to  the  25,000  officers. 
Their  rations,  their  rents  and  their  pay  are  totally  insufficient, 
especially  in  the  lower  ranks  up  to  that  of  major.  A  lieutenant, 
for  instance,  needs  at  the  very  least  double  or  treble  the  amount 
given  him  by  the  government  to  pay  his  way.  The  difference 
must  be  made  up  by  his  parents,  his  friends,  or  by  his  own  private 
means.  The  sums  thus  taken  indirectly  out  of  the  pockets  of  the 
German  people,  to  maintain  their  rank  and  file  in  the  army,  are 
estimated  at  about  $200,000,000  annually.  Thus  the  army 
drains  the  purses  of  the  producing  population  of  vast  sums  in 
addition  to  what  is  raised  by  taxation  for  the  purpose,  and  this 
drain  works  as  a  great  hardship,  especially  on  the  labouring  and 
the  lower  middle  classes. 

Taking,  then,  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  German  army  as  a  whole, 
the  close  observer  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  it  is  an  enormously 
more  expensive  institution  than  official  statistics  would  lead  one 
to  suspect.  True,  it  has,  as  Moltke  was  ever  fond  of  pointing 
out  to  the  popular  representatives  in  the  Reichstag,  great  edu- 
cational value  for  the  nation.  Those  habits  of  discipline,  that 
sturdy  health  and  powerful  digestion,  that  sense  of  order  and 
cleanliness  of  person  which  distinguish  the  modern  German  of 
every  class,  are  in  large  measure  due  to  his  military  training  at 
the  period  of  early  manhood.  But  this  very  training,  too,  has  a 


THE  ARMY  l6l 

tendency  to  harm  in  other  directions.  It  is  inimical  to  that  in- 
dividualism which,  until  military  service  became  general  and 
compulsory  throughout  the  empire,  was  one  of  the  chief  points 
of  strength  in  the  German  national  character.  Military  life 
breeds  "Heerdenmenschen" — i.  e.,  men  who  are  accustomed  to 
follow  a  leader  under  all  circumstances,  not  men  who  are  taught, 
under  the  stress  of  an  individual  struggle  of  competition,  to 
think  and  act  for  themselves,  as  is  the  case,  for  example,  in  this 
country  and  England.  The  influence  of  militarism  in  Germany 
in  this  respect  is,  indeed,  very  powerful,  and  the  subject  is  one 
of  peculiar  interest  to  the  psychologist.  There  is  an  astonishing 
uniformity  of  mediocre  ideas  in  modern  Germany,  with  little  of 
that  daring  flight  of  thought,  that  love  of  speculative  philosophy, 
little  of  that  poetical  sentiment,  which  the  world  was  wont  to 
consider  a  special  province  of  the  German  mind.  There  has  been 
at  work  a  process  of  mental  leveling  down.  This  prevailing 
sameness,  this  dearth  of  genius — although  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  it  is  coupled  with  a  great  increase  in  hard  common  sense  and 
in  a  practical  turn  of  mind — can  be  traced  all  through  German 
literature,  art  and  science  of  to-day.  Since  the  close  of  the 
Franco-German  war  no  really  great  poet,  author,  artist  or  scientist 
has  arisen  in  Germany.  Nearly  all  her  great  names  antedate  that 
war.  This,  I  believe,  is  in  part  owing  to  the  influence  of  military 
training  on  the  mind  of  the  nation  at  the  formative  period  of  life. 

About  the  general  character  of  the  German  army,  especially  its 
morale,  its  appearance  and  organization,  the  world  is  pretty  well 
informed,  and  I  do  not  intend  to  go  into  any  details  here.  But 
a  few  remarks  about  some  features  specially  distinguishing  it, 
and  which  are  often  misunderstood  abroad,  may  be  appropriate. 

First  of  all,  then,  as  to  the  cadet  schools.  There  are  no  less 
than  eleven  of  them.  The  three  largest  are  located  in  a  suburb 
of  Berlin,  called  Gross-Lichterfelde,  in  Munich,  and  in  Dresden, 
respectively,  the  last  two  named,  as  well  as  those  in  Carlsruhe 
(Baden)  and  Ludwigsburg  (Wtirttemberg),  serving  as  training 
institutions  for  officers  in  the  Bavarian,  Saxon,  Wiirttemberg, 
and  Baden  armies,  which  still  enjoy  some  small  remnant  of  their 
former  autonomy.  The  pupils  in  all  these  eleven  cadet  schools 
are  admitted  at  an  early  age,  usually  between  ten  and  twelve, 
and  when  graduating  are  enrolled  in  the  army  as  ensigns  or 


1 62  GERMANY 

"Fahndrich,"  and  average  then  about  seventeen  to  eighteen  in 
age.  The  discipline  they  have  to  submit  to  in  these  cadet  schools 
is  very  strict  indeed,  and  their  uniforms  are  not  very  becoming, 
at  least  so  far  as  those  training  for  the  Prussian  army  are  con- 
cerned. They  are  only  taught  the  rudiments  of  their  profession 
in  these  institutions.  They  receive  instruction  in  Latin,  French, 
and  English,  in  mathematics,  drawing,  geometry,  in  history, 
geography,  etc.,  and  also  in  fencing,  horseback  riding,  dancing, 
swimming  and  other  physical  exercise.  A  large  number  of  the 
pupils  are  sons  of  deceased  army  officers  or  other  servants  of  the 
State,  and  these  usually  receive  everything  free  of  cost,  at  the 
government's  expense,  provided  they  are  without  means.  The 
others  pay  a  sum  which  is  rather  low,  and  probably  does  not 
even  cover  expenses,  something  between  $250  and  $300.  Their 
board  is  plain  but  palatable  and  nourishing. 

After  serving  in  the  army  as  ensigns  for  a  year  or  two,  and 
having  acquired  the  practical  work  of  a  soldier,  the  young  men 
are  then  sent  to  the  "war  school"  or  "Kriegsschule,"  an  insti- 
tution where  they  receive  tuition  in  the  higher  branches  of  mili- 
tary science,  such  as  in  strategy,  tactics,  fortification  science,  the 
use  of  instruments,  Russian  and  other  difficult  languages,  etc., 
and  all  sorts  of  physical  exercise  is  continued.  There  are  also 
eleven  such  schools,  the  pupil  averaging  in  age,  at  admission, 
about  nineteen  to  twenty.  The  largest  and  best  equipped 
of  them  are  situated  in  Potsdam,  Munich,  and  Hanover.  After 
graduating  thence  the  young  men  usually  receive  appointments 
as  lieutenants,  and  are  assigned  to  some  regiment. 

Quite  another  institution  is  the  War  Academy  in  Berlin,  and 
the  smaller  one  in  Munich.  Attendance  there  is  voluntary,  and 
must  be  preceded  by  a  successfully  passed  examination,  in  which 
the  main  point  is  to  determine  whether  the  candidate  is  gifted 
with  more  than  the  average  intellect  and  energy,  as  well  as 
special  qualifications  for  the  higher  military  career.  This  in- 
stitution is  under  the  direct  authority  of  the  General  Staff,  and 
its  main  purpose  is  to  prepare  young  officers  for  entrance  into 
the  General  Staff,  the  War  Ministry,  and  other  military  posts 
requiring  unusual  gifts  of  mind  and  character,  and  also  to  serve 
as  the  first  stepping-stone  for  higher  and  responsible  positions 
in  the  army.  Officers  from  every  branch  of  the  service  go  there 


THE   ARMY  163 

for  the  purposes  stated.  Attendance  during  one  or  more  years 
means  very  hard  but  ambitious  work,  and  whatever  of  rare  quali- 
fications is  in  a  young  officer  is  bound  to  come  out  there.  It  is 
there  the  Kaiser,  who  very  often  visits  the  War  Academy,  and 
who  not  infrequently  lectures  there  on  some  particular  topic, 
usually  historical,  and  the  commanding  generals  first  become 
acquainted  with  budding  military  genius,  and  from  thence  on 
keep  an  eye  on  such  promising  young  men. 

One  of  the  chief  studies  pursued  by  the  pupils  of  the  War 
Academy — men  averaging  twenty-five  or  more — is  the  so-called 
"Kriegsspiel."  This  consists  of  strategic  and  tactical  tasks  given 
to  opposing  officers,  each  one  being  given — in  theory — a  body  of 
troops,  and  locality,  circumstances,  pro  visions,  etc.,  being  stated, 
and  the  task  assigned  being  to  conquer,  retire,  manoeuvre,  etc., 
with  the  one  against  the  other,  the  decision  as  to  how  each  man 
has  fulfilled  his  theme  resting,  of  course,  with  the  teacher.  For 
playing  this  "war  game,"  boards,  men,  and  other  appliances  are 
employed  which  mimic  real  life  as  closely  as  possible.  This 
game,  or  this  mingling  of  theory  and  practice,  has  been  in  vogue 
in  the  War  Academy  and  in  the  German  army  generally  for  the 
last  twenty  years,  and  has  since  been  adopted  as  a  fine  means  of 
developing  the  nascent  military  talent  by  nearly  every  other 
army,  with  the  exception  of  the  British — at  least  up  to  the  out- 
break of  the  Boer  war.  Since  then,  I  understand,  it  has  also 
become  a  feature  of  that  army,  which  for  generations  had  been 
the  most  unprogressive  of  all. 

The  highest  "theoretical  body"  in  the  German  army  is,  of 
course,  the  General  Staff.  Its  organization  differs  from  that 
of  most  other  countries.  It  is  not  a  fixed  body,  but  its  make-up 
alters  continually.  Officers  from  every  branch  of  the  army 
are  sent  there  for  indefinite  periods,  ranging  from  one  to  ten 
years  and  more,  according  to  circumstances.  Its  chief,  General 
Count  Schlieffen,  is  a  pupil  of  Moltke,  and  considered  the  brain- 
iest man  in  the  army  to-day.  He  is  coordinate  with  the 
Minister  of  War,  and  his  well-defined  duties  rest  on  his  shoulders 
exclusively.  These  duties  are  assigned  to  different  depart- 
ments, and  consist  in  (i)  procuring  the  fullest  obtainable  infor- 
mation about  the  organization  and  the  changes  occurring  in  all 
the  armies  of  the  world;  (2)  preparations  of  every  kind  to  keep 


164  GERMANY 

the  army  in  a  permanent  state  of  readiness  for  war;  (3)  perfecting 
the  means  of  transportation  for  the  army  in  the  event  of  war, 
especially  the  railroad  lines  of  strategical  importance.  There 
are  also  a  number  of  minor  duties  assigned  to  the  General  Staff 
of  the  army,  such  as  the  topographical  surveys  of  the  whole 
empire,  and  special  departments  exist  for  military  history, 
geography,  etc. 

The  Kaiser  alone,  as  chief  commander  of  the  whole  military 
forces  of  the  empire,  has  the  right  to  interfere  or  direct  the  affairs 
of  the  General  Staff,  and  he,  indeed,  does  so  very  often.  Reports 
are  constantly  made  to  him,  and  much  of  the  work  done  by  the 
General  Staff  is  traceable  to  special  instructions  received  from 
him. 

The  theoretical  military  education  of  the  German  army  officer 
is,  however,  not  confined  to  these  institutions  above  mentioned, 
but  comprises  more  or  less  every  rank  among  the  field  officers  as 
well.  The  younger  officers,  up  to  the  grade  of  captain,  are  given 
special  tasks  at  regular  intervals,  usually  essays  on  a  given  topic. 
These  are  sent  in,  and  a  choice  made  from  them  all,  and  their 
quality  affords  a  pretty  exact  means  of  measuring  the  brain 
power  of  each  and  every  one  of  them.  This  again  is  of  use  in 
many  ways. 

The  German  army  uniform  is  still  nearly  the  same  as  it  was 
during  the  Franco-German  war  of  1870.  The  military  overcoat 
has  been  changed,  though,  being  now  gray  instead  of  black.  The 
army  rifle,  too,  is  another  one — the  Mauser  of  the  latest  type. 
The  calibre  has  been  reduced  again  and  again  in  size,  until  at 
present  the  limit  seems  to  have  been  reached. 

But  Germany  is  now  on  the  eve  of  a  great  departure  in  the 
matter  of  uniform  and  accoutrements.  The  campaign  in  China 
and  the  South  African  war  were  the  immediate  causes  that  led 
to  the  resolve  of  introducing  in  the  whole  German  army  the  so- 
called  "field  uniform."  By  that  is  meant  the  uniform  to  be  worn 
in  future  wars.  The  British  khaki  and  the  other  innovations 
made  in  that  line  during  the  struggle  between  the  Boers  and 
British  showed  that  the  day  of  glittering,  conspicuous  and  hand- 
some dress  for  the  actual  fighter  is  gone,  and  that  with  our  far- 
reaching  rifles  of  to-day  this  species  of  military  vanity  can  no 
longer  be  indulged  in  with  impunity.  As  an  experiment,  there- 


THE  ARMY  165 

fore,  the  German  contingent  sent  to  China  was  clad  in  a  German 
variety  of  khaki.  On  the  whole  the  experiment  proved  success- 
ful, and  since  then  the  Kaiser,  in  consonance  with  the  other 
German  sovereigns  and  commanding  generals,  has  ordered  that 
the  entire  army  be  fitted  out  with  a  khaki  uniform  for  field  and 
manoeuvre  use.  This  means  a  radical  change  in  appearance,  for 
besides  the  showy  and  high-coloured  regimentals,  everything  else 
will  go  that  glitters  and  scintillates — epaulets,  bright  metal  but- 
tons, the  present  spiked  helmet,  and  the  bright  gun  barrels  and 
sword  scabbards.  Nobody  regrets  this  change,  which  is  even 
now  being  effected,  as  much  as  the  gentle  German  maiden,  for 
it  robs  the  warrior  in  her  eyes  of  ninety  per  cent,  of  that  glamour 
and  romance  which  had  clung  to  him  for  lo  '  these  many  years. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE    NAVY 

ACTING  on  the  impulse  given  by  the  Kaiser,  the,  German  Naval 
Society,  or  Flottenverein,  was  organized  a  couple  of  years  ago. 
This  organization,  although  membership  is  wholly  voluntary, 
now  counts  some  845,000  members,  and  collects  some  $1,250,000 
in  dues.  Its  directors  comprise  a  number  of  the  sovereign 
princes  of  the  empire,  and  nearly  every  person  of  any  prominence 
in  public  life.  Its  purpose  is  to  encourage  the  movement  for  the 
steady  enlargement  of  the  navy,  and  the  moneys  contributed  are 
partly  devoted  to  supporting  that  movement  by  unceasing  and 
varied  agitation,  and  party  to  defraying  the  expenses  of  con- 
structing torpedoes  and  other  harbour  defenses.  Last  year 
another  volunteer  body  of  naval  enthusiasts  collected,  by  small 
public  subscriptions  and  within  a  month  or  so,  enough  to  donate 
to  the  country  the  sum  needed  for  the  building  of  several  vessels. 

These  facts  speak  for  themselves.  They  show  better  than 
long  arguments  could  that  Germany's  naval  aspirations  have 
deep  hold  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  A  mighty  longing  for 
larger  sea  power,  a  determination  to  brook  no  longer  the  over- 
whelming and  resistless  supremacy  of  England  on  the  main,  has 
seized  upon  the  Teuton  soul. 

This  sentiment  is  so  strong  in  the  Germany  of  to-day  that 
even  the  Ultramontane  party,  averse  as  it  is  to  a  world  policy, 
could  not  withstand  its  impact,  and  voted,  in  1898  and  1900, 
almost  to  a  man,  for  the  Naval  Increase  bills,  which,  smce/Efiey 
became  law,  are  the  broad  base  upon  which  the  powerful  new 
German  navy  will  rest.  Without  the  107  votes  of  these 
Ultramontanes  the  bill  at  that  time  could  not  have  been  carried 
in  the  Reichstag. 

Not  much  is  heard  these  days  of  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  lead- 
ing powers  of  the  world  to  increase  their  land  forces.  The  times 
are  gone  when,  in  Germany,  France,  and  Russia,  a  warlike  spirit 
stirred  the  masses,  and  when,  after  heated  debates,  new  army 

1 66 


THE   NAVY  167 

formations  were  sanctioned,  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  sol- 
diers were  massed,  a  standing  menace  to  international  peace, 
along  both  sides  of  the  Vosges  and  of  the  Vistula,  like  unto 
heavily  sheathed  gladiators  spoiling  for  the  fight.  The  conti- 
nental powers  of  Europe  live  since  the  middle  of  the  last  decade 
in  a  period  of  "saturation, "  so  far  as  their  armies  go.  There  is 
no  absolute  stagnation,  but  in  Germany,  as  in  the  neighbouring 
countries,  the  numerical  increase  and  the  improvement  in  arma- 
ment and  military  institutions  take  their  unsensational  course, 
being  principally  based  by  tacit  mutual  agreement  on  the  pro  rata 
of  natural  increase  in  population.  The  only  powers  who  at 
present  are  seriously  occupied  with  the  task  of  enlarging  their 
land  forces  are  the  two  which  had  neglected  this  for  generations, 
viz.,  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 

It  is  sea  power  which  nearly  all  great  nations  simultaneously 
strive  for.  It  is  a  very  singular  and  significant  symptom,  one 
which  thoroughly  characterizes  the  epoch  in  which  we  live,  this 
suddenly  awakened  but  steady  and  powerful  current  of  senti- 
ment. And  in  its  leading  features  it  is  identical  in  all  those 
countries.  The  motives  are  the  same,  and  the  aims  are  very 
similar.  It  has  led  to  a  race  between  the  great  powers,  and  the 
attainment  of  the  object — namely,  the  creation  of  so  great  and 
efficient  a  navy  as  to  vouchsafe  perfect  security  on  the  seas  to 
an  expanding  export  trade,  and  to  give  emphasis  to  political 
demands  abroad,  is  largely  bound  up  in  the  winning  of  this  race. 
At  no  time  since  the  world  began  has  there  been  such  a  unanimous 
endeavour  to  achieve  sea  power,  and  at  no  time  has  the  interest 
called  out  by  this  endeavour  been  so  general  or  so  intense. 

The  instinct,  however,  which  has  impelled  the  broad  strata  of 
each  nation  to  seek  these  new  paths  is,  like  most  powerful  in- 
stincts of  the  masses,  perfectly  justified  by  the  circumstances. 
The  transition,  first,  from  a  continental  to  a  colonial  power,  then 
from  a  continental  to  a  world  policy,  and  from  supplying  the 
home  market  to  catering  to  the  markets  of  the  world,  necessi- 
tated its  correlative,  a  powerful  navy.  England's  development 
in  the  past  furnished  the  object  lesson,  and  pointed  the  way  for 
all  her  lately  arisen  competitors. 

From  the  gigantic  Napoleonic  struggle  at  the  dawn  of  the 
past  century,  England  issued  the  undoubted  victor  on  the  seas. 


1 68  GERMANY 

The  French  fleet  had  disappeared  from  the  ocean,  and  so  had  all 
the  other  fleets  of  the  continental  powers,  with  the  single  excep- 
tion of  Russia,  whose  ships,  though,  remained  confined  to  the 
Baltic  in  their  sphere  of  activity.  With  no  rivals  to  dispute  its 
absolute  sway,  the  island  empire  was  enabled  to  gather  leisurely 
and  uninterruptedly  the  fruits  of  its  blood-bought  achievements. 
During  a  century  England  was  forming  her  world  empire,  and 
girding  the  earth  with  an  unbroken  chain  of  prosperous  and 
profitable  colonies,  and  her  commerce  made  the  entire  globe 
tributary  to  her  merchant  princes  in  the  city.  Her  industry 
rose  to  fabulous  heights,  and  London  became  the  emporium  of 
the  world.  Nobody  stood  in  her  way.  The  continental  powers 
were  still  bleeding  from  the  awful  wounds  which  twenty  years  of 
incessant  warfare  had  struck,  and  when  these  at  last  had  closed 
and  healed,  internal  troubles  arose,  striving  for  a  measure  of 
that  constitutional  liberty  which  England  had  enjoyed  so  long, 
and  then  aspirations  for  national  unification — all  these  engross- 
ing the  attention  and  monopolizing  the  energies  of  these  less 
favoured  peoples  to  the  exclusion  of  all  transmarine  adventures, 
and  of  a  naval  policy. 

It  was  only  during  the  reign  of  Napoleon  III  that  England's 
old  rival,  France,  appeared  once  more  on  the  field  with  a  very 
respectable  navy.  Oddly  enough,  its  first  achievements  were 
not  directed  against  England,  but  on  the  contrary  it  acted  during 
the  Crimean  War  as  her  faithful  ally,  accomplished  considerable, 
and  was  in  point  of  strength  but  very  little  behind  that  of  the 
insular  power.  It  was  France  which  at  that  time,  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  bombardment  of  Kinburn,  first  employed  iron-clad 
batteries,  and  which  soon  after  built  the  first  iron-clad  vessel, 
the  Gloire.  In  England,  where  they  had  allowed  the  fleet  to 
gradually  diminish  to  half  its  former  size,  the  new  danger  of  this 
marine  rivalship  was  clearly  apprehended.  From  that  time  on 
it  became  the  naval  policy  of  England,  a  policy  scarce  influenced 
by  changes  in  party  administration,  to  maintain  at  whatever 
cost  that  naval  supremacy  which  had  brought  the  country  to  the 
pinnacle  of  political  and  material  power. 

This  for  many  years  was  no  hard  task  for  England,  for  after 
her  crushing  defeat  in  1870-71  France  was  in  no  condition  to 
resume  her  former  colonial  and  naval  ambitions,  but  was  com- 


THE   NAVY  169 

pelled  to  rally  all  her  energies  in  recovering  from  the  awful  blow 
she  had  sustained.  And  outside  of  France  there  was  no  power 
which  owned  a  navy  at  all  commensurate  with  England's. 
There  came  a  time,  however,  when  these  favourable  conditions 
ceased  to  exist.  That  was  in  the  middle  of  the  eighties,  when 
France's  navy  once  more  took  her  stand  on  the  oceans,  grown 
again  to  man's  size,  and  when  Russia  suddenly  began  to  deploy 
considerable  naval  forces  both  in  the  Baltic  and  in  the  Black  Sea. 
It  was,  too,  precisely  at  that  time  that  the  attitude  of  both  these 
powers  toward  England  became  nothing  less  than  threatening. 
As  another  rather  formidable  naval  power  Italy  had  come  to  the 
front.  It  is  certain  that  at  this  particular  turn  in  the  wheel, 
England's  sea  supremacy  was  most  seriously  endangered,  es- 
pecially as  Gladstone's  weak  and  vacillating  foreign  policy  then 
extended  to  the  naval  policy  as  well,  and  the  steady  enlargement 
of  the  British  fleet  came  for  a  period  to  a  halt.  If  France  at  that 
time  had  not  continued  to  anxiously  stare  at  the  "gap  in  the 
Vosges,"  left  there  after  1871,  England's  practical  seizure  of 
Egypt  would  not  have  been  possible,  and  the  Suez  Canal  would 
still  remain  what  it  since  has  ceased  to  be — neutral  in  the  full 
sense. 

But  fortunately  for  England,  this  state  of  temporary  weakness 
came  soon  to  a  close.  In  1889  there  advened,  under  strong 
public  pressure,  the  passage  of  the  Naval  Defense  Act,  which 
enabled  the  British  Admiralty  to  begin  the  immediate  con- 
struction of  10  large  battleships,  42  cruisers,  and  18  torpedo 
destroyers.  At  that  time,  too,  the  demand  for  the  two-power 
standard  was  first  formulated,  meaning  thereby  that  England 
at  all  times  must  remain  navally  strong  enough  to  bid  defiance 
to  her  (at  that  time)  strongest  rivals,  France  and  Russia.  This 
demand,  then  only  in  the  mouth  of  English  naval  experts,  has 
now  become  a  national  shibboleth,  and  every  cabinet  since,  r*o 
matter  what  its  other  creed,  has  practically  lived  up  to  this  pro- 
gramme 

The  enormous  naval  armaments  of  England  were  at  first  not 
imitated  at  the  same  ratio  by  the  Dual  Alliance,  France  and 
Russia  For  while  between  1881-1890  the  dual  powers  had 
built  233,144  tons  against  England's  196  440,  the  last  decennium, 
1890-1900,  shows  England  with  715,150  tons  added  to  her  naval 


170  GERMANY 

strength,  against  her  adversaries'  but  495,611.  The  practical 
consequence  was  an  enormous  strengthening  of  England's  sea 
power,  a  fact  which  received  a  very  vivid  illustration  on  the 
occasion  of  the  Fashoda  incident.  England's  navy  had  not  only 
attained  the  two-power  standard,  but  considerably  exceeded  it. 
At  that  time,  a  couple  of  years  ago,  England  was  twice  as  strong 
navally  as  France,  and  more  than  thrice  as  strong  as  Russia, 
while  she  had  at  least  quadrupled  the  strength  of  any  of  the 
minor  sea  powers,  Germany  and  the  United  States  included. 

Within  the  short  time  since,  however,  a  change  has  been 
wrought  in  the  situation,  a  change  which  comprises  above  all  a 
new  grouping  of  naval  powers.  In  1898,  Germany,  the  United 
States,  and  Russia  decided  simultaneously  on  radical  naval 
measures,  especially  on  increases  so  large  and  for  such  long 
periods  in  advance  as  to  alter  the  complexion  of  the  whole  very 
materially.  France  followed  two  years  later  with  a  similar  plan 
of  increase.  The  Russian  plan  contemplated  the  construction  of 
eight  large  battleships,  ten  small  cruisers,  and  thirty  torpedo 
destroyers,  they  costing  altogether  about  $100,000,000.  These 
battleships  are  now  all  in  process  of  construction,  and  several 
are  almost  completed.  Russia's  main  motive  in  this  increase  is, 
however,  less  dictated  by  her  always  latent  antagonism  to 
England  than  by  the  maintenance  of  her  paramount  power  in 
East  Asiatic  waters,  and  this  more  in  antagonism  to  Japan  than 
to  England.  That  England,  however,  has  regarded  this  as  her 
own  affair  is  attested  by  the  recent  Anglo- Japanese  agreement. 
Every  new  vessel,  and  every  available  older  one,  has  been  sent 
by  Russia  since  the  outbreak  of  the  Chinese  troubles  to  East 
Asiatic  seas,  to  the  almost  entire  neglect  of  her  former  strong 
position  in  the  Baltic,  a  fact  at  which  Germany  is  justly  inclined 
to  congratulate  herself,  for  that  in  the  possible  event  of  a  war 
with  Russia  or  France,  or  with  both,  practically  increases 
Germany's  naval  powers  in  those  waters,  both  for  offensive  and 
defensive  purposes,  tremendously.  Russia's  position  in  far 
Asia,  on  the  other  hand,  is  now  impregnable,  since  her  naval 
strength  there  is  far  greater — counting  in,  of  course,  France's 
tready  aid  for  this  purpose — than  that  of  Japan  and  that  portion 
of  the  English  fleet  together  which  England  could  spare  for  the 
purpose,  so  far  from  the  more  important  and  pressing  interests 


THE   NAVY  171 

nearer  home.  England  cannot  deceive  herself  about  that.  She 
could  not,  and  would  not  if  she  could,  jeopardize  her  very  ex- 
istence and  her  dearest  home  interests  for  the  sake  of  a  far- Asia 
adventure. 

Our  own  naval  increase  plan  it  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  here, 
since  a  general  knowledge  of  that  may  be  presumed.  As  to 
France,  her  naval  law  of  1900  provides  for  an  increase  by  1906 
of  five  battleships,  six  iron-clad  cruisers,  twenty-five  torpedo 
destroyers,  and  a  large  number  of  submarine  torpedoes. 

Germany,  on  her  part,  went  much  further  than  the  other 
powers,  for  she  complemented  her  naval  law  of  1898  by  another 
one  passed  two  years  after,  and  which  enables  her  to  build  for  a 
term  of  fourteen  years,  three  battleships  (or  two  battleships  and 
one  large  iron-clad  cruiser),  as  well  as  their  concomitants  of  small 
cruisers,  torpedoes,  and  harbour  defense  vessels,  every  year. 

On  the  strength  of  these  various  naval  increase  laws,  whose 
speedy  execution  seems  beyond  a  doubt,  the  year  1906  would  see 
the  effective  naval  fighting  strength  of  these  four  powers  as 
follows,  counting  only  the  battleships  of  10,000  tons  and  over, 
and  iron-clad  cruisers  of  8,000  tons  and  over,  and  none  of  these 
launched  later  than  1890: 

France     ...  18  battleships,  17  cruisers 

United  States   .  20  10       " 

Germany       .     .  19  7       " 

Russia  1 6  3       " 

This  would  not  be  an  exact  scale  of  measurement,  for  a  num- 
ber of  attendant  circumstances  have  also  to  be  taken  into  account. 
For  one  thing,  both  France  and  Russia  would  have,  besides 
the  above,  reserves  of  great  battleships  which,  though  old, 
would  still  possess  a  certain  degree  of  efficiency.  For  France 
especially  this  is  the  case,  for  this  republic  would  have  the 
big  liners  Neptune,  Marceau,  Hoche,  Formidable,  Admiral  Baudin, 
and  Russia  would  have  the  Sinope,  Tchesme  and  Jckaterina  II. 
The  German  navy  would  have  as  reserve  formations  two  entire 
classes  of  battleships,  the  so-called  "Sachsen"  and  "Siegfried" 
classes.  The  eight  vessels  composing  them  are  not  as  large  as 
the  French  ones,  it  is  true,  but  they  are  much  more  efficient,  and 
have  been  renovated  of  late  so  thoroughly  as  to  be  practically 
reconstructed,  and  as  good  as  new,  according  to  American  exper* 


1 72  GERMANY 

opinions.  Anyway,  it  is  one  of  the  admirable  tricks  of  the 
German  naval  department — and  this  practically  includes  the 
Kaiser  as  well,  who  virtually  dictates  the  entire  naval  policy  of 
ithat  country — to  persistently  and  systematically  understate 
(instead  of  overstating,  as  is  the  case  in  France  and  some  other 
countries)  the  real  naval  strength.  This  policy  is  one  of  the  cun- 
ning ways  they  have  of  keeping  the  country  and  the  Reichstag 
in  the  present  mood — i.  e.,  the  mood  of  generosity  in  granting 
appropriations. 

One  striking  illustration  of  this  may  be  found  in  the  fact  (not 
taken  into  consideration  in  the  above  list)  that  the  rate  of  con- 
struction pursued  by  Germany  in  carrying  out  her  present  naval 
plan  is  by  no  means  as  slow  as  the  law  fixed  it,  and  as  it  was 
stated  above.  Of  this  important  fact  the  United  States  Naval 
Attache*  in  Berlin,  Commander  Wm.  C.  Beehler,  obtained  con- 
vincing proof  last  year,  and  conveyed  the  startling  information 
to  our  Navy  Department  in  Washington.  Chairman  Foss,  of 
the  Congressional  Committee  on  Naval  Affairs,  during  a  recent 
visit  to  Germany,  which  included  inspection  of  the  main  German 
shipyards,  government  and  private,  also  gathered  a  great 
deal  of  valuable  information  in  this  line,  and  obtained  con- 
firmation of  the  above.  The  German  government,  in  fact,  recog- 
nizing the  importance  of  completing,  if  possible,  her  naval  in- 
crease at  as  early  a  date  as  can  be,  made  arrangements  without 
consulting  the  Reichstag  about  it,  to  hasten  construction  much 
before  the  originally  contemplated  time,  so  that  by  1906^  in- 
stead of  nineteen  there  will  probably  be  twenty-one  or  twenty- 
two  battleships  and  nine  instead  of  seven  large  iron-clad  cruisers 
ready  for  action.  The  motive  in  this  will  be  obvious,  and  the 
incidental  misleading  of  public  opinion,  both  at  home  and  abroad, 
is  under  the  circumstances  excusable,  nay,  patriotic.  Some 
of  the  Reichstag  leaders,  who  recently  obtained  proof  of  the 
above,  had  their  lips  sealed  for  similar  reasons.  Suffice  it  to  say 
here,  that  the  German  naval  law,  when  its  wording  is  strictly 
interpreted,  provides  for  the  completion  of  the  naval  increase  by 
1914,  but  that  in  all  probability  this  term  wilFbe  advanced  by 
six  years,  and  in  case  the  international  political  situation  should 
meanwhile  assume  a  complexion  to  make  it  specially  desirable 
and  pressing,  the  period  of  construction  may  be  still  further 


THE    NAVY  173 

abbreviated.  Both  the  German  government  yard  in  Kiel,  and 
the  leading  private  ones,  the  Germania  in  Kiel,  the  Vulcan  in 
Stettin,  and  the  Schichau  in  Elbing  and  Dantzic,  have  made 
preparations  for  that  contingency.  In  strenuously  adhering  to 
this  plan  of  action,  Germany  and  the  Kaiser  are  only  repeating 
what  Prussia  and  William  I  did  in  the  early  sixties,  when  pre- 
paring at  long  hand  for  the  decisive  struggle  for  supremacy  with 
Austria. 

The  weakest  really  in  the  list  in  all  excepting  the  one  item  of 
battleships  and  large  new  cruisers  is  this  country,  providing,  of 
course,  that  by  the  joint  efforts  of  President  Roosevelt,  the 
Navy  Department  and  Congress  our  present  naval  construction 
plan  is  not  also  modified.  For  we  have  no  reserves  at  all,  with  the 
single  exception  of  the  "Texas,"  that  being  the  only  vessel  in 
lieu  of  a  good-sized  reserve,  which  with  our  very  extensive  coast 
line  we  need  more  than  either  Germany  or  France. 

A  striking  fact  in  the  above  showing  is  the  dropping  behind  of 
France.  This  is  largely  due  to  her  indecision  for  many  years, 
and  to  the  wavering  and  often  contradictory  naval  construction 
policy  she  has  pursued.  During  a  number  of  years  she  utterly 
neglected  the  building  of  battleships,  and  has  only  begun  to 
remedy  this  suicidal  policy  during  the  past  eighteen  months, 
but  too  late  to  make  up  for  lost  time.  The  views  of  her  navy 
department  and  of  her  experts  as  to  the  wisest  course  to  pursue 
in  the  matter  of  strengthening  her  navy  have  changed  radically 
several  times  during  the  past  ten  years,  and  an  undue  indulgence 
in  her  special  fad,  that  of  submarine  torpedoes,  has  cost  her  dear, 
and  is  likely  to  cost  her  still  dearer  in  the  future. 

One  of  the  chief  points  of  Germany's  rapidly  growing  naval 
strength  is,  on  the  other  hand,  the  chief  weakness  of  both  the 
American  and  the  English  navies,  that  is,  her  abundance  of 
efficient  human  material  for  manning  her  navy.  In  England, 
it  is  well  known,  the  limit  in  this  respect  has  been  reached  some 
time  ago,  and  assuming  that  England  is  willing  to  spend  the 
money  for  maintaining  her  present  rate  of  ship  construction, 
and  thereby  her  two-power  standard — of  which  there  can  be 
but  little  doubt— that  she  furthermore  is  able  to  maintain 
the  rate  of  speed  of  such  construction,  which,  with  all  her  ship- 
yards strained  to  the  utmost  at  present,  is  somewhat  doubtful, 


I'M.  GERMANY 

there  still  seems  hardly  any  doubt  that  she  has  not,  and  could 
not  in  a  time  of  war,  find  the  crews  to  man  and  adequately 
handle  her  huge  fleet.  All  experts  in  England  seem  to  be  agreed 
on  that  point.  How  it  is  here  in  the  United  States  the  frequent 
and  formal  complaints  and  memoranda  of  the  Navy  Department, 
and  the  President's  last  message  to  Congress,  attest  in  unmis- 
takable language.  The  deficiency  in  both  men  and  officers  in 
our  navy  is  a  matter  which,  while  steps  have  been  at  last  taken 
to  remedy  the  evil,  cannot  be  adjusted  within  five  or  even  ten 
years,  especially  when  the  present  rapid  rate  of  increase  in  the 
vessels  themselves  is  taken  into  consideration.  Nowadays  the 
training  of  men  for  the  navies  of  the  world  is  a  matter  requiring 
much  time,  technical  knowledge,  and  trouble,  both  for  men  and 
officers,  and,  for  one  thing,  our  American  navy  urgently  needs 
several  training  institutions  for  naval  crews,  such  as  Germany 
has  in  Kiel  and  Wilhelmshaven.  The  mere  call  for  3,000  or 
5,000  enlisted  men,  of  which  we  hear  every  year  through  the 
naval  appropriation  bill,  will  not  meet  the  requirements  of  the 
case.  It  is  the  long  and  carefully  adjusted  course  of  drilling  this 
naval  raw  material  which  we  want  to  see  provided  for.  And 
it  is  in  precisely  this  respect  that  the  Kaiser  and  his  present  naval 
secretary,  Rear  Admiral  von  Tirpitz,  have  been  admirably  far- 
sighted.  Of  course,  with  compulsory  military  service,  as  ob- 
taining in  Germany,  and  which  includes  the  men  drawn  every 
year  for  her  navy,  the  task  of  adequately  providing  for  the  cor- 
responding regular  increase  of  men,  keeping  step  with  the  in- 
crease in  vessels,  becomes  far  easier  than  here,  where  every  man 
is  a  volunteer.  And  the  proportionate  increase  in  naval  officers 
is  also  less  difficult  to  attend  to  by  the  Kaiser,  enjoying  as  he 
does  discretionary  powers  in  admitting  naval  cadets  to  the  train- 
ing schools,  and  appointing  officers  later  on,  and  the  pressure 
for  the  naval  career  is  in  Germany  rather  too  strong  than  other- 
wise. Still,  admitting  all  that,  the  prompt  and  systematic 
manner  in  which  the  heightened  needs  of  the  growing  German 
navy  have  been  met  deserves  all  praise.  The  men  in  the 
German  navy  are  excellent  material.  No  navy  has  better. 
This  is  the  deliberate  judgment  of  Rear  Admiral  "Bob"  Evans 
and  of  all  those  naval  experts  who  have  had  a  chance  to  study 
the  German  navy  from  the  inside. 


THE   NAVY  175 

As  for  England,  she  will  have  in  1906 — the  year  taken  here 
for  comparison — provided  she  can  maintain  her  intended  rate 
of  speed  in  the  matter  of  shipbuilding,  forty-jthree  modern  battle- 
ships of  10,000  tons  or  overhand  each  not  older  than  fifteen  years, 
and  twenty-six  iron-clad  cruisers,  whereby  she  would  still  stand 
by  far  in  the  first  place,  and  still  adhere  to  the  two-power  stand- 
ard. But  all  the  same,  her  position  as  a  naval  power  will  be  no 
longer  what  it  was.  Up  to  the  present  she  has  been  not  only 
the  first  naval  power,  but  she  has  had  only  one  formidable  foe 
to  consider,  namely,  France.  In  1906  she  will  have  four  rivals 
to  consider,  whose  joint  naval  strength  will  be  double  her  own, 
and  adding  Italy  and  Japan,  her  supremacy  is  still  further  cur- 
tailed. It  stands  to  reason  that,  no  matter  how  these  new  strong 
naval  powers  will  group  themselves,  the  naval  situation  of  the 
world  will  be  practically  a  new  one. 

In  a  list  of  the  ships  possessing  first-class  fighting  value, 
it  will  be  noticed  that  the  number  of  battleships  of  a 
certain  size  and  date  is  made  the  chief  standard.  This  is  in 
accordance  with  the  view  held  to-day  by  the  overwhelming 
portion  of  naval  experts,  a  view  very  largely  based  upon  the 
experiences  made  in  the  war  with  Spain.  The  modern  battle- 
ship of  a  certain  type  is  the  real  representative  of  actual  sea 
power.  It  combines  all  the  elements  of  success:  Rams  and 
torpedoes,  powerful  gunnery,  and  extensive  armor  protection, 
speed  and  ability  to  execute  every  species  of  manoeuvre — these 
qualities  together  make  the  modern  battleship  indeed  the  ultima 
ratio  populorum  so  far  as  the  watery  element  is  concerned.  It 
can  be  used  for  any  and  every  emergency  in  naval  warfare, 
strongly  contrasting  in  that  respect  with  the  old  ship  of  the  line 
in  the  time  of  Nelson,  whose  availability  was  greatly  circum- 
scribed and  hampered  by  its  lack  of  steam  power,  its  complete 
dependence  on  the  erratic  whims  of  wind  and  current,  and  its 
frequent  inability  to  approach  the  opponent  within  fighting 
distance.  Against  that  unfavourable  showing,  the  modern  ship 
of  the  line  is  able  to  locate  and  approach  its  foe  with  great  speed, 
can  choose  whichever  mode  of  attack  suits  best,  either  by  circling 
around  the  adversary  or  by  passing  and  firing  simultaneously, 
can  fight  him  or  escape  him  if  too  strong,  follow  him  and  com- 
pletely destroy  him,  as  was  done  at  Santiago — in  fine,  the  new 


1 76  GERMANY 

naval  tactics  are  as  flexible  and  comprehensive  as  the  greatest 
enthusiast  can  demand.  The  only  weak  point  this  latest  terrific 
righting  machine  exhibited  until  recently,  viz.,  its  small  radius 
of  sea-going  power,  owing  to  insufficient  coal  supply,  has  been 
overcome.  The  newest  type  of  battleship  is  so  constructed  as  to 
enable  it  to  carry  enough  fuel  for  an  uninterrupted. trip  to  points 
thousands  of  miles  away.  It  can  now  cross  the  ocean  without 
replenishing  its  supply — a  manifest  advantage  of  immense  im- 
portance. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  astonishing  that  with  the  conviction  of  the 
prime  importance  of  the  battleship  all  naval  powers  are  now 
concentrating  their  efforts  mainly  in  the  direction  of  acquiring  as 
many  of  these  as  possible.  France  was  the  last  to  follow.  To- 
day the  former  diversity  of  construction  and  armament — the 
ships  of  the  line,  the  floating  batteries,  casemate  vessels,  turret 
ships,  etc. — has  given  place  to  a  uniform  type,  substantially  the 
same  with  all  nations,  and  only  differing  somewhat  in  degree, 
not  in  kind,  as  technical  difficulties  are  overcome  more  and  more. 

The  type  of  battleship  below  10,000  tons  has  been  abandoned 
for  good,  as  lacking  that  measure  of  fighting  power  and  intensity 
of  action  required  to  destroy  an  able-bodied  enemy.  Germany 
has  given  up  her  smaller  type,  and  is  now  constructing  battle- 
ships of  13,000  tons  and  over.  The  United  States  exceeds  this 
with  her  i6,ooo-ton  vessels,  some  of  which  are  to  be  completed  by 
1905.  Russia,  like  Germany,  is  building  13, ooo-ton  battleships, 
while  the  largest  vessels  ordered  by  France  will  be  15,000  tons, 
and  England  even  exceeds  this  maximum  with  several  of  her 
latest  orders.  Italy,  on  the  other  hand,  after  astonishing  the 
world  in  the  middle  of  the  eighties  with  her  giant  "Italia"  and 
"Lepanto,"  has  now  gone  down  to  13, ooo-ton  liners,  like 
Germany. 

Germany  chose  the  smaller  type  of  13,000  tons  because  in 
comparison  with  the  slight  increase  in  armour  and  fighting 
strength  for  the  1 6, ooo-ton  vessel,  an  increase  which  is  deemed 
non-essential,  the  disadvantages  accruing  to  the  larger  ship, 
viz.,  much  higher  cost,  decrease  in  mobility,  difficulties  in  navi- 
gating near  flat  coasts,  lack  of  docking  facilities  in  foreign  waters, 
etc.,  play  no  decisive  figure.  This,  at  least,  is  the  German 
official  view  of  the  hour.  She  believes  that  her  12,000  and 


THE    NAVY  177 

i3,ooo-ton  fighters  are  equal,  if  not  superior,  to  ours,  and  to  the 
English  15,600  and  i6,ooo-ton  ships,  because  her  type  allows  of 
a  more  voluminous  and  diversified  artillery  outfit,  and  because, 
as  she  thinks,  her  gunners  are  more  thoroughly  trained  in  the 
use  of  these  more  diversified  weapons.  And  while  this  country, 
following  England's  example,  has  concentrated  the  main  effort 
upon  a  few  very  heavy  guns  (in  this  again  being  led  by  the  ex- 
perience of  the  war  with  Spain) ,  Germany  has  made  a  specialty  of 
developing  the  use  and  the  quality  of  her  medium-quality  artil- 
lery. The  ships  of  her  "Kaiser"  and  " Wittelsbach "  classes 
(11,500  and  12,500  tons  each)  have  been  fitted  out  each  with  no 
less  than  eighteen  15 -centimetre  rapid-firing  guns,  while  the 
British  "Royal  Sovereign"  and  "Duncan"  classes,  although 
4,000  tons  larger,  can  boast  of  but  twelve  such.  Germany 
believes  in  this  superiority  of  quick-firing  guns,  because  her  naval 
campaign  system  is  entirely  built  up  on  the  principle  of  the 
offensive,  just  as  is  her  army.  The  above  calibre  for  medium- 
power  artillery  has  been  increased  in  Germany  to  1 8  centimetres 
in  the  larger  vessels  now  under  way.  France  has  chosen  the  1 6- 
centimetre  type  for  the  same  class  of  her  artillery,  while  we  and 
Italy  have  20-centimetre  guns  of  the  middle  variety,  and 
England  even  23  centimetres.  Germany  believes  this  is  going 
too  far,  as  it  robs  these  medium-size  guns  of  their  chief  virtue, 
viz.,  rapidity,  abundance  of  ammunition,  and  ready  availability. 
The  heavy  battery  in  the  centre  of  the  ship  is  about  the  same 
with  the  different  nationalities,  up  to  28  and  30  centimetres,  and 
fired  from  behind  steel-proof  turrets. 

The  armour,  too,  is  substantially  the  same  for  England, 
Germany,  Russia,  and  America,  viz.,  nickel  steel  made  by  the 
Krupp  process.  The  thickness  of  the  plates  on  the  German 
battleships  is  between  six  and  eight  inches  on  the  water  line, 
above  that  four  to  five  inches,  and  the  turrets  and  other  specially 
exposed  parts  up  to  twelve  inches.  This  is  about  the  same  on 
our  American  vessels  of  the  newest  type,  as  well  as  on  the  English 
and  French  battleships.  The  new  German  battleships  are  all 
capable  of  a  speed  of  eighteen  to  nineteen  knots,  whereby  they 
equal  or  surpass  the  best  English  or  American  ones. 

As  to  cruisers,  Germany's  policy  differs  materially  both  from 
the  English  and  American  one.  She  believes  that  cruisers  are 


178  GERMANY 

not  able  to  protect  adequately  the  commerce_of  a  naval  bel- 
ligerent,  but  that  the  sole  use  of  cruisers  consists  in  acting  as  the 
vanguard  of  the  heavier  and  less  speedy  squadron  of  battleships, 
ascertaining  the  strength,  the  intentions  and  movements  of  the 
enemy  for  the  information  of  the  latter.  Germany  has  definitely 
adopted  this  view  for  considerations  which  in  her  case  at  least 
seem  valid  enough.  To  effectively  protect  her  transmarine^ 
commerce  she  would  really  need  more  cruisers  than  battleships, 
and  even  then,  with  the  cable  betraying  the  whereabouts  of 
vessels  everywhere,  she  deems  such  a  task  an  impossibility  in  the 
case  of  a  much  stronger  adversary  like.  England.  In  any  case, 
Germany  argues,  the  decision  will  come  in  a  pitched  naval  battle, 
and  all  her  large  cruisers  are  needed  for  that.  No  matter  who 
her  future  naval  adversary,  the  great  danger  to  her  commerce 
will  be  a  blockade  of  her  chief  harbours  and  adjacent  coast  lines. 
If  she  is  able  to  successfully  withstand  such  an  attempt,  routing, 
utterly  defeating,  or  scattering  her  enemy,  that  great  danger 
would  be  eliminated.  This,  be  it  understood,  is  part  and  parcel 
of  Germany's  naval  plan  of  action  in  case  of  war  with  a  naval 
power  greater  than  hers. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  Germany's  intention  to  increase  her  present 
number  of  large  cruisers  only  so  far  as  these  are  needed  to 
assist  her  battleships,  and  not  with  a  view  of  protecting,  her  sea 
trade.  That  is  one  vital  point  of  difference  between  the 
German  naval  plan  of  campaign  and  the  English  as  well  as  the 
American  one.  But  she  again  differs  in  this,  that  she  does  not 
believe  in  such  monster  cruisers  as  both  this  country  and 
England  are  now  building — leviathans  of  14,000  and  14,500  tons, 
like  the  "Drake"  class  in  England  and  the  "California  "  class 
here.  Instead,  she  confines  the  maximum  size  of  her  armoured 
cruisers  to  9,000  tons  (just  as  Italy  and  Japan  do),  whereby  she 
is  enabled  to  give  them  greater  speed  and  a  greater  radius  of 
action.  In  all  other  respects,  though,  Germany  tries  to  make 
her  iron-clad  cruisers  as  strong  as  possible,  giving  them  an 
unusually  powerful  armament.  But  there  is  another  very 
important  difference — Germany  continues  to  construct  small 
cruisers  of  great  speed,  whereas  England,  the  United  States 
and  France  have  abandoned  that.  These  small  cruisers  do  not 
exceed  3,000  tons  in  size,  and  their  armour  is  light,  but  they 


THE  NAVY  179 

have  a  speed  of  twenty-two  to  twenty-three  knots,  thus  enabling 
them  to  perform  excellent  service  as  the  "hussars  of  the  sea," 
quickly  gaining  information  about  the  enemy,  and  successfully 
avoiding  pursuit  by  their  greater  velocity.  Of  this  type  of  extraor- 
dinarily mobile  cruisers  Germany  is  now  making  a  specialty,  and 
intends  to  use  them  not  only  in  home  waters,  but  also  in  far- 
away seas.  Within  a  few  years  she  will  have  some  sixty  of  these. 

The  torpedoes  built  by  Germany  have  now  the  uniform  size  of 
300  tons,  like  England's  latest,  but  against  the  i  ,ooo-ton  torpedoes 
which  the  United  States  is  now  constructing.  The  German 
navy  department  does  not  believe  in  submarine  boats,  at  least 
not  in  the  types  so  far  evolved  by  this  country  and  France.  The 
reasons  advanced  for  her  disbelief  are  that  these  boats  do  not 
possess  swiftness,  that  their  radius  of  vision  is  too  confined,  and 
that  their  motions  lack  precision,  and  hence  their  efficiency  can 
be  but  slight  under  any  circumstances.  In  this  judgment  the 
best  English  experts  so  far  agree.  But  in  this  as  in  other  mooted 
points  in  naval  lore  Germany  is  awaiting  proof  either  way. 

The  German  navy  is  at  present  increasing  at  the  annual  rate 
of  about  nine  or  ten  vessels,  with  a  tonnage  of  between  75,000 
and  80,000.  In  other  words,  the  rate  of  speed  is  greater  for 
Germany  than  for  us,  and  the  total  tonnage  for  her  navy  is 
larger  to  begin  with.  Although  in  the  number  of  vessels  we  are 
still  ahead  of  her,  the  proportion  being  136  against  122,  we  have 
but  eighteen  battleships  (whereof  five  are  slow  and  antiquated), 
eight  armoured  cruisers  and  twenty-one  protected  cruisers  (the 
latter  being  of  but  secondary  value),  the  rest  being  practically 
worthless  as  fighting  machines.  Unless  Congress  bestirs  itself, 
there  will  be  a  steady  dropping  behind  Germany.  It  is  estimated 
on  the  best  secret  information  obtained  in  Washington,  that 
within  six  years  from  now,  in  1908,  Germany  will  have 
twenty-eight  battleships,  with  a  corresponding  number  of 
armoured  cruisers,  whereas  at  our  present  rate  of  increase  we 
shall  have  but  twenty-two  battleships  and  twelve  cruisers, 
although  it  must  be  taken  into  consideration  that  our  vessels 
will  average  larger  than  theirs,  both  battleships  and  cruisers. 
Still,  the  discrepancy  will  be  considerable. 

The  main  difference  in  Germany's  favour,  though,  as  pointed 
out  before,  and  one  which  it  is  very  difficult  to  change,  is  our 


i8o  GERMANY 

insufficient  supply  of  efficient  men  for  the  navy,  both  officers  and 
men,  and  Germany's  abundance  in  that  respect. 

Another  American  weakness,  as  compared  with  Germany,  is 
our  lack  of  a  steady  naval  policy,  and  our  complete  dependence 
each  year  on  the  whim  and  on  the  political  complexion  of 
Congress.  The  adoption  of  her  naval  Iaws^of_i898_and  i^gocxgave 
the  German  navy  department  the  coveted  opportunity  of  map- 
ping out  and  then  consistently  carrying  through  a  uniform  and 
far-sighted  programme  of  naval  enlargement  and  improvement, 
and  this,  of  course,  is  now  bearing  fruit.  With  us  there  is  ab- 
solutely no  guarantee  that  even  the  present  rate  of  increase  will 
proceed  uninterruptedly.  A  revulsion  of  popular  feeling,  or  the 
election  of  a  Congressional  majority  on  the  crest  of  a  wave  for 
retrenchment,  or  any  other  radical  change  in  the  political  com- 
plexion of  the  country,  may  bring  the  present  modest  move- 
ment for  naval  expansion  to  a  sudden  halt.  Against  all  such 
accidents  German  naval  expansion  is  secured. 

But  Germany  possesses  some  great  advantages  outside  of  all 
this  in  any  future  naval  war,  no  matter  with  which  power  or 
powers.  Her  Baltic  Canal  is  the  most  important  of  these.  This 
narrow  but  perfectly  practicable  waterway  joins  the  Baltic  to 
the  North  Sea,  the  route  being  from  a  point  not  far  from  Kiel  on 
the  Baltic  to  Brunsbuttel,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe  River, 
some  distance  out  toward  the  North  Sea  from  Hamburg.  This 
canal  is  worth  another  fleet  to  Germany.  Instead  of  having  two 
water  fronts  to  protect,  as  before,  it  virtually  reduces,  for 
defensive  and  offensive  purposes  in  all  but  rare  cases,  these  two 
to  one,  and  doubles  the  effectiveness  of  her  navy.  It  makes  it 
possible  for  Germany  during  any  naval  war  of  the  future  to  con- 
centrate her  entire  naval  forces,  within  the  space  of  thirty-six 
hours  or  even  less,  at  any  given  point — either  along  the  shore 
of  the  North  Sea  or  of  the  Baltic,  and  gives  her  a  water  trans- 
port way  for  her  shipping  which  would  be  practically  exempt 
from  the  danger  of  blockades.  It  does  more  than  that  even. 
For  in  case  of  an  overwhelming  naval  superiority  of  the  enemy, 
this  canal  puts  it,  if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst,  always  within 
Germany's  power  to  find  with  her  fleet  a  temporary  refuge  within 
this  canal,  where  she  could,  by  placing  subaqueous  torpedoes,  etc., 
safely  defy  her  bigger  foe,  and  save  her  entire  navy  from  ruin, 


THE    NAVY  181 

from  such  a  sweeping  disaster  as  the  French  met  with  at  Trafalgar 
and  Aboukir.  The  enormous  strategical  advantage  of  the 
Baltic  Canal  has  been  clearly  apprehended,  of  course,  not  alone 
in  Germany,  but  in  all  other  countries  that  might  some  time  or 
other  become  her  foes  on  the  water  or  by  land,  and  it  is  in  no 
small  part  due  to  this  knowledge  that  Germany  is  recognized  as  a 
formidable  naval  power,  far  beyond  the  actual  number  of  her 
vessels.  The  canal  and  her  extensive  system  of  coast  defense,  she 
possessing  no  less  than  eight  armoured  vessels  of  3,000  to  4,000 
tons  each  for  such  defense,  besides  some  fifty  smaller  ships  for  a 
like  purpose — make  her  powerful  in  a  defensive  naval  cam- 
paign, and  the  same  canal  allows  her  to  quickly  concentrate  her 
naval  forces  for  purposes  of  attack  so  long  as  she  confines  her 
operations  to  home  waters. 

Another  great  advantage  for  her  is  the  flat  and  dangerous 
character  of  her  coasts,  more  particularly  the  line  along  the 
North  Sea,  between  her  two  principal  ports  of  Hamburg  and 
Bremen  and  further  west  toward  Holland.  This  makes  navi- 
gation and  coast  approach  very  difficult  for  an  enemy  at  a  time 
when  all  protective  measures  for  navigation  have  been  removed. 
That  whole  stretch  of  coast,  as  well  as  certain  parts  of  her  Baltic 
coast,  is  one  of  the  most  prolific  in  loss  of  life  and  ships,  and  it 
would  prove  ten  times  as  inhospitable,  of  course,  in  time  of  war. 

The  fact  that  nearly  nil  the  steamers  of  the  North  German 
Lloyd  as  well  as  of  the  Hamburg- America  Line,  together  forming 
a  very  large  fleet  of  over  one  hundred  vessels,  are  enrolled  by 
the  German  government  as  auxiliary  cruisers  in  the  event  of 
war,  is  seldom  mentioned,  but  it  is  nevertheless  a  fact.  This  is 
also  of  importance,  as  our  experience  with  the  few  auxiliary 
vessels  of  the  kind  during  the  Spanish  war  strikingly  proved. 
The  "Morganizing"  of  these  two  chief  German  lines  has  in  nowise 
altered  these  facts,  it  must  be  remembered. 

The  only  question  about  the  German  navy  that  is  still  in  a 
sense  an  open  one  is  the  question  of  its  personnel.  Germany 
has  never  had  a  naval  war,  and  hence  never  enjoyed  the 
opportunity  of  demonstrating  before  the  eyes  of  the  world  ex- 
actly what  she  amounts  to  as  a  sea  fighter.  In  that  respect, 
then,  she  may  be  called  an  unknown  quantity,  despite  all  that 
is  theoretically  known  about  the  technical  excellence  and  the 


182 


GERMANY 


spirit  of  her  men  and  officers.  England,  the  United  States, 
France,  Spain,  Holland,  have  all  shown  their  naval  mettle,  but 
it  remains  for  Germany  to  win  her  spurs.  However,  everything^ 
points  to  the  strong  assumption  that  she  will  give  a  good,  and 
perhaps  a  very  good,  account  of  herself  whenever  the  time  should 
come  for  her  that  tries  men's  souls.  The  discipline  in  her  navy  is, 
of  course,  second  to  none,  and  may  be  better  than  any.  Whether 
she  will  equal  the  English  in  bulldog  courage,  or  America 
in  valour,  dash,  initiative  and  brilliant  performance,  remains  to 
be  seen.  At  any  rate,  the  bulk  of  the  men  composing  the  German 
naval  crews,  engineers,  etc.,  are  the  descendants  of  those  men 
from  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  and  North  Sea  who,  as  the  sturdy 
fighters  for  the  Hansa,  centuries  ago,  waged  fierce  and  bold  war 
upon  the  Scandinavian  shores.  These  are  the  same  men,  too, 
who  in  the  British  and  to  a  less  extent  in  the  American  merchant 
marine  have  all  along  been  held  the  most  efficient  and  reliable 
seamen.  So,  to  be  sure,  the  presumption  is  on  all  accounts  a 
strong  one  that  the  men  of  the  German  navy  will  some  day  pluck 
laurels  in  a  mighty  wrestle  on  the  deep 


CHAPTER  XIII 

EDUCATION 

HER  high  status  of  education,  the  thoroughness  of  instruction 
given  in  her  schools  and  colleges,  and  the  matchless  excellence 
of  her  universities,  are  among  the  chief  glories  of  Germany. 
In  this  respect,  as  in  some  others,  she  is  recognized  the 
world  over  as  the  leading  country.  Teachers  from  this  land  and 
from  every  other  visit  her  educational  institutions  for  the  pur- 
pose of  studying  the  methods  and  the  men  that  have  made  her 
great  as  the  "schoolmaster  of  the  world,"  and  then  return  home 
and  advocate  more  or  less  important  modifications  in  consonance 
with  what  they  have  seen.  Every  summer,  when  American 
schools  are  closed  and  their  superintendents  or  principals  are  off 
on  a  European  trip  for  recreation  and  professional  profit,  scores 
of  them  may  be  seen  wandering  through  Germany's  public  and 
private  schools,  under  the  escort  of  more  or  less  willing  and 
courteous  officials,  inquiring,  verifying,  taking  notes.  The 
German  universities  are  still  regarded  by  American  students  and 
professors,  despite  the  enormous  advances  made  here,  as  their 
second  almae  matres,  where  they  take  postgraduate  courses,  and 
complement  the  sum  of  their  knowledge  on  any  given  topic.  It 
is  this  country  especially  which  owes  to  Germany's  unrivaled 
educational  system  a  vast  debt,  and  one  which  the  scientific 
world  of  America  has  always  been  more  than  ready  to  acknowl- 
edge, both  in  public  and  private.  In  every  one  of  our  American 
colleges  and  universities  a  number  of  the  ablest  professors  and 
tutors  received  at  least  a  part  of  their  mental  and  moral  equip- 
ment in  German  halls  of  learning. 

The  German  scientific  spirit,  the  German  thirst  for  knowl- 
edge, and  the  German  earnest  search  for  truth  have  become  an 
integral  portion  of  American  science,  and  in  some  departments, 
such  as  psychology,  astronomy,  and  biology,  the  pupil  of  late 
has  begun  to  distance  his  teacher.  This  fact  has  been  pointed 

183 


1 84  GERMANY 

out  by  Professor  Miinsterberg  and  others  best  able  to  judge. 
And  the  vivifying  and  bracing  influence  of  Germany  upon 
American  scientific  thought  is  unabated  to  this  day. 

Illiteracy  has  practically  been  stamped  out  in  the  empire,  and 
the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  every  normally  endowed  child 
and  adult  there  will  possess  at  least  the  rudiments  of  an  educa- 
tion. The  official  statistics  as  tc  the  knowledge  of  reading  and 
writing  among  the  recruits  to  the  German  army,  published 
annually,  show  this  convincingly.  In  the  year  1879  the  number 
of  analphabets,  out  of  140,881  recruits,  was  still  2,217  or  I-5'7  Pgr 
cent.  In  1889,  ten  years  later,  out  of  170,494  recruits,  the  num- 
ber had  gone  down  to  869  or  .51  per  cent.,  and  last  year  the 
number  had  further  diminished  to  213,  or  .08  per  cent.,  out  of 
a  total  number  of  255,103  recruits.  There  were  still  great  differ- 
ences between  the  various  parts  of  Germany.  In  ten  of  the 
twenty-six  states  of  Germany  there  was  not  found  a  single  illiter- 
ate person,  and  in  the  most  progressive  and  populous  provinces 
of  Prussia,  namely,  Westphalia,  Schleswig-Holstein,  Hanover  and 
the  Rhineland,  the  percentage  had  dropped  to  .01  or  .02.  From 
that  it  rose  to  the  highest  figure  in  Posen,  East  Prussia  and  West 
Prussia,  where  the  Poles  predominate,  and  where  the  figures 
amounted  to  .41,  .36,  and  .31,  respectively.  But  even  this 
maximum  of  illiteracy  is  far  lower  than  the  minimum  in  the 
most  advanced  parts  of  all  the  other  civilized  countries,  and 
neither  France,  Great  Britain,  nor  the  United  States,  although 
in  each  and  every  one  of  them  immense  strides  have  been  made, 
can  at  all  be  compared  in  this  respect  with  Germany. 

While  this  is  true  of  elementary  school  education,  there  has 
also  come  a  much  greater  diffusion  of  higher  knowledge  in  the 
empire  since  the  war  with  France.  The  intermediate  schools 
particularly,  the  "gymnasia"  (or  lower  colleges),  "realgymnasia" 
(or  schools  imparting  instruction  both  in  classic  and  modern 
branches,  up  to  a  certain  degree),  and  "real  schools"  (or  insti- 
tutions teaching  mathematics,  modern  languages,  history, 
chemistry,  geography,  etc.)  are  overcrowded,  though  several 
hundreds  of  new  ones  have  been  built  and  endowed  of  late  years. 
This  is  due  to  a  number  of  causes.  The  tuition  fees  charged  for 
attendance  at  them  are  low.  In  the  best  of  them,  even  in  cities 
like  Baslin,  Dresden,  Leipzig,  etc.,  where  prices  in  nearly  every 


EDUCATION  !85 

thing  else  have  enormously  risen,  these  fees  do  not  exceed  130 
marks,  or  less  than  $32,  per  year  of  eleven  months.  Attendance 
at  either  these  public  schools  or  at  more  high-priced  private 
schools  of  similar  scope,  is  required  to  obtain  the  maturity 
certificate  enabling  the  pupil  to  matriculate  at  any  of  the  German 
universities,  or  the  lower  certificate  entitling  to  one  year's  volun- 
teer service  in  the  army. 

The  pressure  to  study  at  the  universities  is  almost  as  keen. 
The  attendance  at  all  the  German  universities  and  technical 
high  schools  has  greatly  increased.  It  is  now  more  than  double 
that  of  thirty  years  ago.  Berlin  has  now  nearly  7,000  students, 
and  Leipzig  and  Munich  follow  with  4,000  and  5,000,  respectively. 
The  four  faculties  into  which  the  sum  of  studies  is  divided  at 
every  German  university  have,  however,  profited  at  a  very  un- 
equal ratio.  The  greatest  increase  has  been,  relatively  speaking, 
in  jurisprudence,  that  branch  which  every  one  entering  the  gov- 
ernment administrative  career  must  have  gone  through  with. 
Next  in  the  ratio  of  gain  is  the  medical  faculty,  a  profession  which 
though  it  entails  the  longest  preliminary  preparation  of  all  in 
Germany,  and  which  neither  in  financial  profit  nor  in  popular 
estimation  stands  as  high  as  the  first -mentioned,  opens  up  an 
independent  and  honourable  career.  The  most  unprofitable 
faculty,  that  of  philosophy  (which  is,  however,  much  more  com- 
prehensive in  scope  than  the  name  would  imply,  since  it  com- 
prises not  only  philosophy  proper,  but  mathematics,  astronomy, 
literature,  philology,  etc.),  comes  next  in  the  scale  of  increase; 
and  the  fourth,  that  of  theology,  shows  not  only  no  gain,  but 
an  absolute  loss.  This  last  fact  is  quite  significant,  for  from 
the  merely  practical  point  of  view  theology  has  grown  in  attrac- 
tiveness. Incomes,  salaries,  and  emoluments  of  Protestant 
clergymen  and  Catholic  priests  have  become  much  higher  in 
Germany  than  formerly.  The  unwillingness  of  the  educated 
classes  to  engage  in  the  profession  of  spiritual  adviser  is,  there- 
fore, due  to  other  causes.  The  main  reason  doubtless  is  the 
growing  spirit  of  atheism  or  religious  indifference  and  the  spirit- 
ually unsatisfactory  conditions  for  young  men  devoting  them- 
selves seriously  to  their  high  task  of  nurturing  the  religious  long- 
ings of  those  who  have  remained  firm  in  the  fo.ith.  The  bitter 
strife  that  is  being  unceasingly  waged  between  the  two  great 


1 86  GERMANY 

currents  of  theological  thought  in  Germany,  the  orthodox  and 
unprogressive  on  the  one  side,  and  the  critical  and  liberal  on  the 
other,  has  also  something  to  do  with  the  falling  off  in  the  num- 
bers of  theological  students. 

Perhaps  the  most  serious  drawback  to  this  general  diffusion  of 
higher  education  is  the  birth  and  steady  increase  of  that  element 
of  the  population  which  has  been  dubbed  the  "educated 
proletariat."  This  already  amounts  to  a  serious  danger,  and  if 
present  conditions  are  allowed  to  go  on  unchecked  the  danger  will 
intensify.  The  process  is  a  perfectly  natural  and  unavoidable 
one.  The  annual  output  of  young  men  highly  equipped  in  all 
knowledge  which  books  can  teach  is  simply  greater  than  the 
number  of  vacant  places  within  the  sphere  of  the  empire  which 
they  would  be  competent  to  fill.  The  surplus  of  such  men, 
unutilized  human  material  of  the  higher  kind,  is  therefore  left  in 
a  more  or  less  serious  predicament.  Many  of  them  remain  for 
years  a  burden  on  their  parents  or  friends,  until  they  are  in  the 
end  provided  for  in  a  more  or  less  befitting  manner.  Others 
emigrate,  or  obtain  temporary  employment  in  foreign  countries. 
But  the  large  bulk  of  these  unfortunates  drift  into  spheres  of 
activity  for  which  they  are  not  trained,  and  in  which  they 
feel  unhappy  and  misplaced.  In  other  words,  to  become  self- 
sustaining  they  have  to  descend  one  or  two  rungs  in  the  social 
ladder,  and  then  almost  invariably  lose  caste  with  their  former 
fellows,  lose  in  self-esteem,  and  swell  the  ranks  of  the  dissatisfied. 
Socialism  is  the  great  gainer  by  this  process.  The  accessions 
to  the  Socialist  party  from  this  intellectual  "proletariat"  are 
large  when  numerically  considered,  but  of  still  greater  impor- 
tance from  the  fact  that  they  bring  a  constantly  self-renewing 
elite  of  highly  educated  men  within  the  fold.  From  these  men 
the  Socialist  editors,  agitators,  and  party  managers,  etc.,  are 
now  largely  drawn.  Some  of  the  more  violent  and  combative 
ones  among  these  "misfits"  also  join  the  anarchist  ranks,  or 
become  extremists  of  an  individual  type. 

There  are,  however,  other  features  in  the  German  educational 
system  which  call  for  comment.  It  is  a  very  remarkable  fact 
that  the  number  of  persons  in  Germany  who  declare  the  prevail- 
ing system  ill  adapted  to  the  needs  of  our  time  is  constantly 
growing.  It  may  be  remembered  that  the  German  Emperor 


EDUCATION  187 

after  his  accession  for  a  time  led  the  movement  for  a  radical 
change  in  this  respect.  He  had  clearly  discerned  the  fact  that 
an  educational  system,  no  matter  how  good  in  itself,  and  how  well 
adapted  originally  to  the  requirements  of  practical  life,  does  not 
remain  so  permanently;  that  the  rapidly  growing  importance  of 
technical  knowledge  in  all  the  sciences  which  have  come  to  the 
front  within  the  past  decade  urgently  demands  a  greater  amount 
of  theoretical  and  practical  education  in  this  regard  than  the 
existing  system  contemplated,  and  that,  unless  Germany  in  the 
practical  application  of  this  fact  again  led  the  world,  the  nation 
would  soon  drop  behind  in  the  race  with  competitors.  The 
Kaiser  elaborated  these  ideas  in  public,  and  Professor  Hinzpeter 
(his  former  tutor),  as  well  as  Professors  Riedler,  Slaby,  and 
others,  were  commissioned  by  him  to  carry  them  into  broader 
strata  of  the  nation.  He  also  induced  the  Prussian  Cabinet  to 
take  up  this  matter,  and  many  months  were  consumed  by  the 
professional  pedagogues  entrusted  with  the  task  of  thoroughly 
investigating  the  whole  matter,  and  then  reporting  on  it. 

The  Kaiser,  however,  met  with  the  determined  opposition  of 
all  the  "old  fogies  "  in  the  empire  and  these  unflinching  defenders 
of  the  prevailing  system  proved  more  powerful  in  the  end 
than  he.  For  they  held  all  the  responsible  posts  in  the  wide 
educational  field,  and  in  the  government  offices  as  well.  Their 
arguments  were  the  same  that  are  always  advanced  under  such 
circumstances.  Summarized,  the  burden  of  their  lay  was  that 
Germany  had  become  great  under  and  by  the  prevailing  system 
of  education;  that  it  was  the  envy  of  all  other  nations  and  the 
pride  of  Germany  herself;  and  that  a  serious  diminution  in  the 
amount  of  classics  taught  meant  an  irretrievable  loss  in  the 
mental  and  moral  equipment  of  the  whole  nation.  There  were 
prominent  educators  in  Germany  who  withstood  this  train  of 
reasoning,  and  who  made  on  conspicuous  public  occasions  power- 
ful and  closely  reasoned  appeals  to  the  better  and  more  unbiased 
understanding  of  the  nation.  Professor  Riedler,  for  instance, 
when  installed  as  rector  of  the  Technical  High  School  in  Charlot- 
tenburg,  the  leading  one  in  the  empire,  delivered  a  carefully 
prepared  oration  on  the  need  of  throwing  a  good  deal  of  the 
classical  ballast  in  German  school  life  overboard,  and  devoting 
more  attention  to  the  study  of  applied  science,  to  modern  Ian- 


i88  GERMANY 

guages,  etc.,  and  his  pronouncement  was  echoed  from  the  Vistula 
to  the  Moselle,  and  commented  on  for  months  in  every  German 
newspaper  and  periodical,  but  mostly  adversely.  The  Kaiser, 
now  and  then,  made  declarations,  like  the  one  that  he  did  not 
"want  young  Germans  to  be  taught  how  to  become  Greeks  and 
Romans,"  and  that  the  "main  thing  was  to  fit  them  for  the 
struggles  and  ambitions  of  practical  life."  Some  attempts,  too, 
were  made  to  embody  these  new  teachings  into  concrete  form, 
and  a  number  of  so-called  reform  schools  were  called  into 
sxistence. 

But,  as  above  hinted  at,  the  Kaiser  finally  yielded  to  the 
unbending  opposition  on  the  part  of  the  professional  pedagogues 
and  teachers  of  Germany,  and  abandoned,  for  a  number  of  years 
at  least,  his  efforts.  However,  the  conviction  has  been  steadily 
gaining  ground  of  late  that  a  thorough  change  must  be  wrought 
in  educational  methods  in  Germany,  on  pain  of  being  outclassed 
in  the  keen  race  between  the  leading  nations  during  the  new 
century.  This  conviction  is  shared  now  (which  may  be  looked 
upon  as  a  hopeful  sign)  by  a  growing  percentage  of  high  govern- 
ment officials — men  of  middle  age,  or  past  it,  and,  of  course, 
wholly  trained  according  to  old  methods.  The  recent  book  by 
one  such  official  shows  beyond  a  doubt  that  neither  the  existing 
schools  or  universities,  nor  the  technical  high  schools,  prepare 
their  pupils  sufficiently  for  the  practical  needs  of  life,  or  for  the 
employment  of  that  universality  of  knowledge  which  formerly 
was  looked  upon  as  the  great  mission  of  German  universities. 
He  recommends  as  a  remedy  the  complete  reorganization  of 
the  whole  system.  The  universities  especially  he  proposes  to 
remodel.  He  advises  the  creation  in  technical  faculties,  above  all, 
and  he  wishes  that  the  teaching  in  the  middle  and  lower  schools 
be  reshaped  in  accordance  with  this  plan,  so  that  graduates  from 
them  shall  be  better  prepared  for  independent  scientific  work  in 
the  technical  branches  and  in  the  natural  sciences.  He  recog- 
nizes the  great  difficulties  in  the  way  of  realizing  his  programme, 
but  he  deems  these  difficulties  by  no  means  insurmountable,  and 
at  all  events  he  claims  that  something  must  be  done  in  the  direc- 
tion indicated,  and  the  sooner  the  change  be  inaugurated  the 
better. 

Since  that  time  things  have  progressed  far  enough  in  the  new 


EDUCATION  189 

direction  to  clearly  show  that  a  break  with  the  past  is  coming. 
Besides  the  "reform  high  school"  in  Frankfort-on-the-Main, 
which  for  years  was  operated  against  government  influences  and 
led  a  struggling  existence,  Prussia  is  now  founding  two  similar 
institutions  herself,  one  in  Breslau  and  the  other  in  Dantzic,  and 
appropriations  for  them  have  already  been  made  by  the  Prussian 
Diet.  Both  these  new  institutions  will  be  started  on  a  large 
scale,  and  liberally  endowed.  They  will  in  their  main  features 
be  organized  on  the  lines  advocated  by  Professor  Riedler. 

Public  education  in  Germany  has  been  seriously  suffering  of 
late  from  repeated  attempts  made  to  curtail  that  freedom  of 
scientific  research  and  of  publicly  disseminating  its  results,  no 
matter  what  its  social  or  political  trend,  which  has  been  the  chief 
glory  of  German  culture  during  the  past  century.  The  Kaiser 
and  his  government  were  powerfully  assisted  in  these  systematic 
efforts  by  all  the  reactionary  forces  in  German  political  and  social 
life.  The  Lex  Arons,  as  that  particular  bill  was  called  which 
was  introduced  in  the  Diet  and  which  threatened  the  greatest 
danger,  went  further  in  this  direction  than  any  other  government 
measure  ever  had.  Its  outspoken  aim  was  to  demolish  at  one 
blow  liberty  of  scientific  research  at  the  universities.  It  was  to 
subject  the  "  privatdocenten,"  or  tutors  and  independent  lecturers 
at  the  universities,  to  a  rigid  system  of  supervision,  and  was 
to  make  the  Minister  of  Education  the  sole  arbiter  as  to  their 
fitness  as  public  teachers.  The  long  and  acrimonious  debate 
on  it  in  the  Diet  gave  the  government  as  well  as  the  opposition 
the  much  coveted  opportunity  to  expound  their  views.  The 
Prussian  Minister  of  Education  openly  declared  it  to  be  the  main 
mission  of  the  universities  to  train  young  men  into  good  servants 
of  the  state  and  of  the  monarchy,  into  men  of  orthodox  views  on 
all  important  questions,  political  and  otherwise,  and  not  men  of 
science  alone. 

The  late  Professor  Virchow,  one  of  the  most  renowned  veterans 
of  science  in  Germany,  flayed  the  Minister  of  Education  because 
of  this  frankly  utilitarian  admission,  and  the  other  leaders  of 
scientific  thought,  almost  to  a  man,  strongly  sided  with  him. 
Prof.  Ludwig  Buechner  made  a  powerful  appeal  to  the  mature 
intellect  of  the  nation,  and  after  a  very  hard  fight  in  the  Diet 
and  in  the  press  of  the  country,  which  produced  protests  against 


GERMANY 

the  bill  from  every  university,  the  measure  was  finally  defeated. 
As  a  curiosity  it  deserves  mention  that  this  bill  took  its  name 
from  one  of  the  university  tutors,  Doctor  Arons,  a  lecturer  on 
economic  science  at  Berlin  University,  and  one  of  the  most  lavish 
contributors  to  the  Socialist  party  fund.  Doctor  Arons  is  a 
wealthy  man,  the  son  of  a  banker,  and  under  existing  conditions 
he  cannot  be  removed  from  his  position,  which  he  has  success- 
fully held  for  a  number  of  years. 

Although,  however,  this  attempt  to  squelch  "academic  liberty" 
was  foiled,  and  one  in  the  Reichstag,  despite  the  joint  aid  of  the 
Conservatives  and  of  the  Centre,  met  a  similar  fate,  these  plans 
have  by  no  means  been  abandoned  by  the  Kaiser  and  his 
advisers,  and  they  will  doubtless  again  come  to  the  surface  at 
a  more  opportune  moment.  This  has  engendered  a  feeling 
of  unrest  and  of  insecurity  in  the  whole  scientific  world 
of  Germany,  and  has  proved  a  seriously  disturbing  element. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  whole  spirit  has  greatly  changed  in 
German  schools  and  higher  educational  institutions.  This  is  but 
natural  in  a  nation  whose  conditions  of  life  have  been  so  greatly 
modified  of  late.  And  this  change  is  even  more  noticeable 
among  the  students  and  pupils  than  among  their  teachers.  The 
spirit  of  bald  utilitarianism  is  rampant  among  these  boys  and 
young  men.  For  the  specific  form  it  has  taken  the  word 
"Streberthum"  has  been  coined  in  Germany,  which  in  its 
generally  accepted  meaning  stands  for  a  hard  striving  after 
material  success,  no  matter  what  the  means  employed  to  that 
end.  There  is,  indeed,  no  disguising  the  fact  that  German 
youth  of  to-day  is  no  longer  distinguished  for  that  idealism, 
that  love  of  science  and  knowledge  for  their  own  sakes,  which 
formed  one  of  its  prime  characteristics  until  not  many  years  ago. 
The  present  generation  of  young  Germans  has  discarded  old  aims 
and  ideals,  and  indulges  no  longer  in  illusions  of  any  kind. 
They  are  severely  matter-of-fact.  This  change  is  most  pro- 
nounced among  the  university  students.  They,  too,  are  the  most 
loud-voiced  jingos,  the  blind  admirers  of  unscrupulous  success. 

There  are  compensating  features,  however.  One  of  them  is 
the  newly  awakened  love  of  sport.  This  is  the  Kaiser's  doing, 
and  he  has  shown  an  admirable  amount  of  tact  and  perseverance 
in  this  matter.  Fifteen  years  ago  nearly  every  form  of  healthful 


EDUCATION  191 

physical  exercise,  excepting  fencing,  was  unknown  among 
the  youth  in  German  universities  and  intermediate  schools. 
Patiently  and  persistently  the  Kaiser  set  to  work,  and  first  awak- 
ened, then  vigorously  fostered,  a  liking  for  every  form  of  manly 
sport.  He  organized  the  aquatic  clubs,  the  football  and  lawn 
tennis  clubs,  foot  races  and  rowing  matches,  not  alone  among 
the  university  and  college  youth,  but  among  the  pupils  of  the 
lower  schools,  and  among  the  rest  of  the  population.  He  gave 
the  best  example  himself,  and  he  spared  neither  trouble  nor  time 
to  attend  and  in  every  way  encourage  intercollegiate  sporting 
events,  founding  and  personally  distributing  appropriate  prizes 
to  the  winners. 

The  movement  is  young  as  yet,  and  it  is  not  to  be  expected 
that  these  young  Teuton  athletes  will  just  yet  do  as  well  at 
international  contests  as  their  English  or  American  cousins.  But 
they  are  making  steady  progress,  and  within  another  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  these  young  Germans  will  give  a  good  account  of 
themselves.  The  incidental  gain,  however,  has  perhaps  been 
even  greater.  The  German  student  is  gradually  weaning  him- 
self from  a  number  of  his  former  vices  and  senseless  customs. 
The  process  is  necessarily  a  slow  one,  but  in  the  two  points  here 
specially  referred  to,  the  dueling  nuisance  and  the  enormous 
beer-guzzling,  there  has  been  a  very  perceptible  improvement. 
The  number  of  students  not  belonging  to  a  "schlagende 
Verbindung" — /'.  e.,  a  club  imposing  on  all  its  members  the 
obligation  to  fight  members  of  all  similar  clubs  on  the  slightest 
provocation,  has  been  largely  on  the  increase.  Federations  of 
students'  clubs  tabooing  this  barbarous  form  of  amusement  have 
been  formed,  thus  adding  to  the  organized  powers  of  resistance 
against  the  stupid  custom,  and  greatly  heightening  their  moral 
influence.  The  membership  of  the  fighting  clubs  is  steadily 
decreasing,  at  least  in  the  larger  universities,  and  it  is  no  longer 
deemed  a  shame  for  a  young  fellow  of  spirit  to  keep  aloof  from 
them.  At  Berlin  University,  for  instance,  the  non-fighting 
students  now  outnumber  the  fighting  ones  six  to  one.  In  the 
smaller  university  towns,  largely  because  life  there  would  other- 
wise be  too  dull,  and  also  because  they  are  sought  by  students 
less  for  their  educational  advantages  than  for  the  purpose  of 
having  "a  good  time,"  the  old  and  time-honored  brawlings  and 


192  GERMANY 

slashings  still  survive  to  a  large  extent,  but  it  is  otherwise  in  the 
larger  and  more  important  universities,  where  students  go  to 
really  work.  This  reform,  for  such  it  is,  must  be,  besides,  visible 
to  every  one  now  visiting  Germany,  for  the  scarred  and  cut 
faces  among  the  present  generation  of  German  students  are  now 
in  a  decided  minority.  I  do  not  intend  to  convey  the  meaning 
thereby  that  the  students'  duels  are  a  thing  of  the  past.  Far 
from  it.  I  remember  reading,  not  long  ago,  a  typical  advertise- 
ment in  one  of  the  most  widely  read  of  German  papers,  wherein 
an  ambitious  university  student  asked  for  the  services  of  some- 
body who  could  produce  in  his  face,  by  acids  or  otherwise,  but 
without  endangering  his  life,  a  "permanent  and  formidable 
looking  cicatrice,"  a  so-called  "Renommir-Narbe."  The  con- 
sideration for  this  service  he  fixed  high  enough  to  cut  very  deeply 
into  his  next  monthly  allowance  from  home.  And  this  young 
man's  case  is  not  an  isolated  one.  It  is  still  customary  with 
many  students  to  estimate  the  value  of  a  man  by  the  number 
of  well-marked  cuts  in  his  face,  and  to  feel  a  sovereign  contempt 
for  the  "Finkenschaft" — i.  e.,  the  non-fighting  students.  But, 
as  stated  above,  the  number  of  these  silly  young  fellows  is 
steadily  diminishing,  and  another  generation  will  probably 
eradicate  them  entirely  from  the  life  of  the  German  universities. 
It  would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  as  much  about  the  beer- 
drinking  habits  of  the  German  students.  These  habits,  though 
here  brought  into  peculiar  forms,  and  with  a  narrowly  circum- 
scribed etiquette  that  has  many  curious  features  of  its  own, 
are  really  based  on  the  national  character  as  it  has  been 
described  since  the  days  of  Tacitus.  And  as  such  they  will  prob- 
ably endure  through  the  centuries  to  come.  The  "commers," 
or  drinking,  singing,  and  orating  according  to  a  certain  formula; 
the  "beer  comment,"  or  the  rules  and  regulations  governing  the 
sociable  meetings  of  a  club  of  students ;  and  all  the  other  quaint 
and  partly  charming  customs  that  are  binding  on  the  organized 
university  men,  flourish  to-day  as  formerly.  But  in  their  grossly 
exaggerated  forms  there  has  been  effected  an  unmistakable 
amelioration.  "Beer  duels,"  where  men  would  drink  against 
each  other  out  of  sheer  bravado,  sometimes  fifty  large  tankards 
of  it  at  one  session,  until  one  or  both  of  them  would  roll  over 
like  a  log,  are  rare  nowadays.  Young  men  do  not,  as  a  rule,  ruin 


EDUCATION  193 

their  stomachs  for  life  with  continued  beer  orgies,  as  many  used 
to  do.  Nor  do  they  now  acquire  other  dissolute  habits  quite  to 
the  same  extent.  There  is  distinct  improvement  in  all  this. 

There  is,  however,  still  a  world  of  jollity  in  student  circles  for 
all  that.  It  is  but  necessary  to  pay  a  flying  visit  to  those  quar- 
ters of  many  a  German  city  where  students  most  do  congregate 
to  become  convinced  of  that.  The  old  devices  for  "tying  the 
bear,"  that  is,  "raising  the  wind,"  are  still  in  vogue,  and  im- 
portunate creditors  are  stayed  off  or  hoodwinked  with  the  same 
skill.  In  one  of  the  Berlin  streets  much  affected  by  students, 
pulleys  reaching  from  garret  to  garret  across  the  street  may  be 
observed.  They  are  "telegraphic  connections"  between  the 
quarters  occupied  by  impecunious  but  happy  students,  enabling 
each  camp  to  assist  the  other  with  eatables,  "drinkables,"  and 
even  clothes.  A  small  basket  is  frequently  seen  traveling 
through  midair,  and  bringing  succour  in  every  shape  to  that  side 
of  the  street  requiring  it  most. 

In  comparison  with  the  cost  of  college  life  in  England  or 
America,  the  German  universities,  even  the  most  expensive,  are 
low-priced.  Berlin  is  about  at  the  top  in  this  respect,  but  $350 
to  $450  will  pay  all  the  required  expenses  of  a  student  there  for  a 
year,  with  close  economy,  of  course.  At  Griefswald,  Giessen, 
Tubingen,  Wiirzburg,  and  some  others  of  the  smaller  ones,  $250 
to  $300  per  annum  will,  at  a  pinch,  do  the  trick.  This  a  large 
number  of  German  students,  as  well  as  many  of  the  foreign 
ones,  do.  The  Russian  ones  are  said  to  often  get  along  on  much 
less  than  that;  but  then,  of  course,  not  every  one  likes  a  perma- 
nent diet  of  weak  tea  and  cigarettes.  At  any  rate,  several 
American  students  I  knew  in  Berlin  got  along  on  the  sums  men- 
tioned above.  It  is  amazing  at  what  low  prices  many  restau- 
rants specially  frequented  by  university  students  sell  substantial 
and  appetizing  meals  in  the  German  cities,  especially  when  the 
cost  of  meat  is  considered.  But  it  is  a  simple  fact  that  many  of 
these  restaurants  furnish  good  food  for  ten  to  fifteen  cents  per 
meal,  and  a  quart  of  foaming  and  choice  beer  can  there  be  had 
for  another  four  cents.  In  a  word,  Germany  is  still  a  Dorado 
for  the  poor  and  ambitious  American  student  who  is  sure  of  him- 
self and  knows  how  to  avoid  the  pitfalls  of  metropolitan  life. 
For  the  morally  weak  and  impressionable  American  youth  th» 


104  GERMANY 

German  university,  no  matter  where  and  which,  is  the  worst 
possible  place,  unless  he  happens  to  be  supplied  liberally  with 
paternal  funds  and  be  pulled  out  of  the  slough  of  despond  in 
time.  The  writer  has  seen  some  curious  cases  over  there,  which 
convinced  him  that  not  every  American  young  man  is  able 
to  stand  transplanting  from  his  native  heath  to  a  German 
university,  with  its  total  lack  of  supervision  and  moral  restraint 
— at  least,  not  without  grave  danger. 

Everybody  has  seen  the  German  professor,  of  course — I  mean 
in  Fliegende  Blatter.  The  typical  German  professor  with  his 
goggles,  his  cane,  his  long  hair,  his  absent-mindedness,  his  gruff 
good-nature  and  his  colossal  erudition.  Of  course.  He  has  done 
duty  as  a  national  type  lo  !  these  many  years,  and  the  whole  world 
knows  him  now  better  than  he  ever  knew  himself.  Well,  it  is  a 
pity,  but  this  German  professor  no  longer  exists.  He  has  utterly 
vanished,  and  his  place  knows  him  no  more.  He  is  gone  with  so 
many  other  things  once  distinctively  German.  Personally,  I 
regret  it.  He  was  of  his  kind  perfection,  the  best  receptacle  for 
holding  an  enormous  amount  of  learning,  and  the  best  and 
readiest  squanderer  of  it  as  well.  He  was  a  type,  and  a  fine  one. 
He  is  no  more. 

In  his  place  stands  the  modern  German  professor,  almost 
the  antipode  of  his  predecessor.  He  is  alert,  often  commercial, 
sleek;  frequently  elegant  and  fastidious  in  his  bearing  and  get-up, 
a  connoisseur  in  the  matter  of  a  dinner,  of  a  fine  painting,  of  a 
horse,  even  of  a  Havana  cigar  or  an  Egyptian  cigarette.  At  a 
state  dinner  the  writer  once  met  some  thirty  of  the  most  promi- 
nent Berlin  university,  professors.  They  were  a  revelation  to 
him.  Faultless  in  their  attire,  they  were  bright  conversational- 
ists, and  in  every  detail  thorough  men  of  the  world.  One  of 
them  led  in  the  lady  of  the  house  with  the  courtly  grace  of  a 
Chesterfield.  They  knew  to  a  nicety  every  wine  served,  even 
the  vintage.  They  discoursed  with  acumen  about  the  most 
bewildering  dishes.  They  knew  everything  that  a  gourmet 
could  possibly  know.  After  the  banquet  they  drank  their  small 
cup  of  cafe  noir  and  smoked  their  Henry  Clay  with  it  in  a  way 
that  showed  long  training. 

These  men  were  typical.  They  represented  the  new  German 
professor.  He  is  more  charming  and  more  elegant  than  his  fore- 


EDUCATION  105 

runner,  and  his  gold-rimmed  eyeglasses  are  more  becoming  to  him 
than  the  other's  clumsy  specs,  but  still — on  the  whole,  I  preferred 
the  other.  Why,  this  new  professor  is  sometimes  so  infernally 
smart  that  he  has  been  known  to  cheat  even  his  Yankee 
confrere.  A  Philadelphia  professor  of  note,  an  eye  specialist, 
was  neatly  done  by  one  of  these  new-fangled  German  professors. 
He  had  come  to  Berlin  for  the  sole  purpose  of  attending  the 
clinic  of  this  famous  man,  and  to  see  him  perform  operations. 
He  went  to  see  him.  The  Berlin  celebrity  charged  him  a  very 
steep  fee  for  the  privilege  of  watching  him  at  his  clinic  with  his 
patients,  but  the  Philadelphia  man  gladly  paid  it.  This  mood 
gradually  changed  to  disgust,  however,  when  he  discovered  that 
it  was  not  the  famous  professor  at  all  whom  he  had  paid  for 
seeing  perform  miracles,  but  merely  one  or  other  of  his  assistants, 
men  who  knew  no  more  than  he,  the  Philadelphian.  This  sharp 
Berlin  professor  was  but  one  of  a  kind.  With  the  growing  at- 
tendance at  the  larger  German  universities,  their  incomes  have 
climbed  to  figures  which  would  have  seemed  fabulous  to  their 
predecessors,  and  most  of  this  is  derived  from  individual  tuition 
fees  paid  by  the  students.  Some  of  the  more  famous  professors 
in  Berlin — for  instance,  men  like  Professor  von  Bergmann, 
Professor  von  Leyden,  etc. — are  credited  with  annual  receipts 
between  $50,000  and  $100,000.  Professor  Koch  (the  "cholera- 
bacillus"  man),  Delbriick,  Schiemann,  Rontgen,  Behring, 
Slaby,  Schmoller,  and  others,  are  all  in  the  enjoyment  of 
incomes  which  some  years  ago  would  have  been  called  princely. 
Nowadays  it  pays  to  be  a  German  professor. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SOCIAL    CUSTOMS 

IT  is,  of  course,  inevitable  that  the  greatly  altered  conditions 
of  life  in  Germany  should  have  had  a  corresponding  influence  on 
the  national  character  and  customs.  Both  have,  in  fact,  changed 
so  greatly  that  a  native  German,  returning  after  the  lapse  of 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years,  feels  himself  simply  lost.  The  people 
around  him  think  and  feel  differently  on  most  subjects  than  was 
their  wont,  and  as  the  fact  is  more  and  more  brought  home  to  him 
that  he  lacks  community  of  ideas  with  them,  he  feels  amazed  and 
stunned  as  by  a  blow  to  his  tenderest  sensibilities.  That  explains, 
too,  why  so  very  few  of  these  returned  exiles  feel  at  home  in  the 
Germany  of  to-day,  and  generally  are  glad  after  a  spell  to  leave 
the  country  of  their  birth  a  second  time  and  to  bid  a  final  fare- 
well to  the  scenes  of  their  childhood.  Without  exaggerating  in 
the  slightest,  one  can  say  that  there  is  no  modern  nation  which 
has  altered  so  much  in  essential  respects  within  a  generation  as 
Germany  has.  The  framework  of  the  national  character  has 
remained  the  same,  it  must  be  admitted,  but  a  score  of  new  quali- 
fications have  been  brought  into  existence,  and  a  number  r 
others  have  been  eliminated.  Among  the  latter  there  are  somt, 
which  the  world  has  regarded  as  distinctively  national  traits, 
and  among  the  former  are  several  which  the  Germans  themselves 
all  along  considered  wholly  un-German. 

Yet  if  one  were  asked  what  the  leading  German  characteristic 
is,  the  answer  even  to-day  must  still  be:  Deliberate  slowness.  In 
that  respect  there  has  been  little  change,  at  least  among  the  vast 
majority  of  the  people.  To  an  American,  accustomed  to  rapid 
and  intense  work,  there  is  probably  nothing  more  annoying  and 
exasperating  in  Germany  than  the  constant  recurrence  of  this 
systematic  tardiness.  He  meets  with  it  in  all  his  dealings  with 
the  authorities ;  he  encounters  it  at  every  step  in  his  intercourse 
with  the  people;  he  finds  it  an  insurmountable  barrier  in  the 
transaction  of  any  business  which  may  have  brought  him  over. 

196 


SOCIAL   CUSTOMS  197 

So  much  is  this  part  of  the  very  fiber  of  the  people  that  they  are 
unable  to  understand  how  anybody  can  be  in  a  hurry.  They 
actually  look  with  suspicion  upon  the  unwary  stranger  in  the 
street  who,  not  acutely  alive  to  this  bent  of  the  national  mind, 
displays  haste  in  his  movements.  They  think  he  must  be  an 
escaped  criminal,  or  at  any  rate  somebody  who  is  on  some  unlaw- 
ful errand.  If  our  American  has  an  unusual  fund  of  humour 
and  patience,  he  will  derive  much  quiet  enjoyment  from  all  tnis. 
To  give  himself  a  good  treat,  for  instance,  let  him  watch,  now 
and  then,  a  gang  of  labourers  at  work.  They  eat  six  meals  a 
day,  and  this,  naturally  enough,  demolishes  a  not  inconsiderable 
fraction  of  their  time.  After  their  midday  repast  each  one  of 
the  men  indulges  in  a  one-hour's  nap  in  the  cool  shade  of  a  tree 
or  on  the  soft  side  of  a  board,  sleeping  soundly  and  peacefully. 
When  he  resumes  work,  he  will,  as  a  rule,  leisurely  thump  the 
asphalt  or  set  some  paving-stones,  then  stop,  calmly  surveying 
the  landscape,  puffing  like  a  porpoise,  and  filling  his  lungs  with  a 
new  supply  of  fresh  air.  Like  as  not  he  will  then  slowly  fill  a 
pipe,  set  it  aglow,  and  begin  a  bantering  conversation  with  his 
fellow  "toilers,"  who  instantly  stop  work  to  enter  into  it  with  all 
their  faculties  undisturbed.  From  time  to  time  one  of  the  men 
will  take  a  good  swig  from  his  side-pocket  flask  of  Nordhauser 
(cheap  corn  spirits),  and  then  hand  it  to  his  comrades,  who  just 
as  deliberately  will  imitate  his  example.  Then,  perchance,  they 
will  all  try  another  bit  of  work,  and  thus  the  long  summer  day 
of  fourteen  hours  will  pass  right  pleasantly.  The  foreman  or 
overseer  who  superintends  their  task  is  to  the  manner  born.  To 
him,  as  to  them,  their  interpretation  of  the  term  "work"  appears 
the  natural  and  normal  one.  He  joins  in  their  six  meals — break- 
fast, "second"  and  "third"  breakfast,  dinner,  "vesper,"  and 
early  supper,  often  to  be  followed  on  their  return  home  by  a 
later  and  more  substantial  evening  meal.  The  amount  of  actual 
labour  accomplished  in  this  way  in  a  working  day  of  nominally 
fourteen  hours  is  about  half  or  two-thirds  that  done  by  the  aver- 
age American  labourer  in  eight  hours.  This  explains,  too,  the 
curious  fact  that  it  costs  more  in  wages  to  pave  a  street  or  build  a 
house  in  a  German  city  than  in  an  American  one,  notwithstand- 
ing that  the  scale  of  payment  is  a  much  lower  one.  German 
labourers  seldom  earn  more  than  three  marks,  or  seventy-two  cents 


i98  GERMANY 

a  day,  and  the  best  mechanics  rarely  more  than  2 1  to  24  marks,  or 
about  five  or  six  dollars  a  week.  Of  course,  there  are  exceptions, 
such  as  jewelers,  makers  of  optical  and  other  instruments  of  pre- 
cision, skilled  mechanics  in  the  electrotechnical,  machine-build- 
ing, typewriter,  sewing  machine  or  watch-making  lines,  some  of 
whom  earn  as  high  as  forty  marks  per  week,  or  about  ten  dollars. 
But  the  above  wages  are  the  rule,  and  considering  the  small 
amount  of  work  done,  this  is  not  astonishing. 

As  the  common  labourer  works,  so  work  the  tradespeople 
and  mechanics  of  every  kind.  Bricklayers,  stonemasons,  black- 
smiths, horseshoers,  joiners,  carpenters,  etc.,  all  work  leisurely; 
this  shows  the  force  of  habit  and  example,  for  these  same  men, 
when  later,  perhaps,  transplanted  to  this  country,  learn  quickly 
enough  to  toil  to  more  purpose  and  to  do  their  best.  In  factories, 
too,  the  same  thing  may  be  noticed,  although  there,  because  of 
"piece  work"  having  been  adopted  in  many  places,  a  change  has 
been  slowly  operating  for  some  years  past.  What  is  true  of  this 
class  of  the  population  is  true  in  a  still  higher  degree  of  the 
German  master  mechanics.  It  is,  for  instance,  next  to  an  impoS' 
sibility  to  get  a  tailor,  a  shoemaker  or  a  paperhanger  to  finish  a 
piece  of  work  in  the  time  agreed  upon,  no  matter  how  high  the 
pay  offered,  nor  how  alluring  the  inducements  held  out  to  him. 
Curiosity  prompted  me  several  times  during  my  stay  in  Berlin 
to  try  and  get  at  the  reason  impelling  these  men,  often  showing  a 
fair  amount  of  intelligence  in  other  matters,  in  thus  standing  in 
their  own  light.  The  answer  was  with  some:  What  is  the  use? 
No  matter  how  hard  we  might  work,  we  could  not  earn  any 
higher  wages.  Others  again  said:  How  can  you  expect  us  to 
have  any  ambition  ?  We  cannot  rise.  We  must  always  remain 
what  we  are — drudges. 

These  answers  seemed  to  me  a  powerful  sermon  on  the  unfor- 
tunate continuance  of  the  caste  and  class  spirit  in  Germany. 
For  in  other  walks  of  life  where  ambition  had  a  legitimate  field 
to  expend  itself,  there  has  been  undoubtedly  a  change  in  this 
matter.  In  fact,  the  higher  one  goes  in  German  society  to-day, 
the  more  one  will  find  a  greater  incentive  to  work,  and  an 
intenser  application  to  it — in  fact,  an  Americanization  in  methods 
and  spirit.  This  is  notably  true  of  German  manufacturers,  and 
also  of  the  higher  employees  in  industrial  enterprises  of  every  sort. 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  199 

The  race  for  wealth  is  not  yet  as  keen  there  as  here,  but 
when  comparing  present  conditions  with  those  a  generation  ago 
the  change  wrought  is  immense.  With  material  progress  has 
come  a  more  materialistic  view  of  life.  A  surprising  degree  of 
[uxury  is  evident  in  the  higher  classes.  Men  of  wealth  now 
occupy  a  different  position  in  popular  estimation  from  that  for- 
merly held.  The  German  public  is  as  much  interested  in  their 
millionaires  and  industrial  dynasties — in  the  Krupps,  Stumms, 
and  Siemens;  the  Loewes,  Bleichroders,  and  Warschauers;  the 
Mendelsohns,  Scherls  and  Wertheimers — as  Americans  are  in 
theirs.  Luxury  is  everywhere  apparent — in  the  stores  and 
shops,  in  the  display  of  fine  clothes  and  jewelry,  at  social  gath- 
erings, in  the  appointments  of  houses,  exteriorly  and  interiorly. 
Fine  palaces  are  reared  by  her  wealthy  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers in  the  large  cities  and  towns,  and  beautiful  country 
residences  in  the  fashionable  suburbs,  with  spacious  grounds 
adjoining.  Nothing  is  more  astonishing  to  the  foreigner  visiting 
Germany  than  this  feature  of  present  German  life.  The  enter- 
tainment of  guests  has  become  more  of  a  fine  science  there  than 
here.  The  cuisine  and  the  table  appointments  to  be  seen  on 
festive  occasions  in  wealthy  German  homes  would  have  made 
the  Germans  of  the  last  generation  gasp  with  amazement  and 
disapproval.  Art  patronage  has  become  extensive  and  liberal, 
and,  I  will  add,  intelligent  as  well.  The  young  German  artist  now 
finds  at  home  a  good  market  for  his  product.  Private  galleries 
and  costly  collections  of  every  description  are  numerous  and 
choice.  Just  to  name  a  few  at  random,  there  are  those  of  Ravene" 
and  Jaffa*  in  Berlin,  either  of  them  worth  a  million  or  more,  and 
the  Jaff6  collection,  though  rich  in  fine  Murillos,  Velasquez, 
Rembrandts,  Reynolds,  Turners,  Rubens,  Titians,  and  other 
masters  of  earlier  days,  practically  unknown  to  the  general 
public ;  the  fine  collections  owned  by  Arthur  Krupp  in  his  Villa 
Hugel  near  Essen;  by  the  great  bankers,  Bleichroder,  Robert 
Warschauer,  and  Kaskel,  the  Cologne  publisher  Dumont- 
Schauberg.  The  Count  Schack  collection  in  Munich  was  recently 
left  to  the  Kaiser,  but  by  him  presented  to  the  municipality  of 
Munich.  Then  there  are  many  special  collections  of  carvings  in 
wood  and  ivory,  old  and  artistic  furniture,  gobelins,  intaglios, 
etc.,  like  those  of  Prince  Radziwill,  Jacobi,  Prince  de  Sagan,  and 


200  GERMANY 

others.  As  a  curiosity  might  be  mentioned  the  collection  of 
"historical  corsets"  belonging  to  the  wife  of  the  Berlin  publisher, 
August  Scherl,  of  which  one,  once  the  property  of  unfortunate 
Queen  Marie  Antoinette,  cost  her  $12,000. 

But  the  same  love  of  luxury  is  visible  in  public  establishments. 
The  old-fashioned  German  "Kneipe,"  with  its  smoke-stained 
ceiling  and  musty  odour,  has  made  room  for  veritable  beer 
palaces.  Berlin  especially  excels  in  this.  In  the  leading  thorough- 
fares of  that  capital  imposing  structures  built  in  the  purest 
architectural  style,  of  costly  brownstone  or  other  expensive  and 
durable  material,  exquisitely  sculptured  and  fitted  up  with  cor- 
responding elegance  inside,  meet  the  eye;  and  the  guest  finds 
there  every  imaginable  creature  comfort.  It  was  at  first  thought 
that  such  palatial  "beer  restaurants,"  as  the  Berliner  calls  them, 
would  not  pay;  instead,  they  have  proved  gold  mines  to  their 
owners,  and  the  best  classes  frequent  them.  The  same  is  true 
of  the  new  cafe's  in  Berlin  and  the  other  German  cities.  They 
at  first  were  modeled  after  the  large  Vienna  ones,  but  they  soon 
surpassed  their  models  in  every  way.  Such  an  artistically  fur- 
nished and  beautiful  cafe*  as  the  Kaisercafe1  in  Berlin,  opened 
about  three  years  ago,  does  not  exist  anywhere  else,  for  instance. 
The  man  who  started  it  had  been  head  waiter  at  an  older  Berlin 
establishment,  the  Cafe*  Bauer,  for  about  ten  years,  and  the 
$200,000  spent  in  its  fitting  represented  ten  years'  "tips."  The 
Austrians  now  go  to  Berlin  when  they  want  to  see  a  fine  Vienna 
cafe*. 

In  hotels  there  has  been  the  same  rise  in  luxury.  Ten  years 
ago  there  was  not  in  the  whole  of  Germany  a  hostelry  which 
either  in  size  or  comfort  could  be  compared  with  our  leading 
American  hotels.  To-day  there  are  scores  that  will  bear  such  a 
comparison  in  every  respect.  At  the  Palace  Hotel  in  Berlin,  the 
finest  dinners  and  wines  in  Europe  are  served,  so  connoisseurs 
claim,  and  there  is  nothing  in  either  London  or  Paris  that  equals 
the  Hotel  Bristol  there.  The  German  hotel  used  to  be  dreaded 
by  fastidious  foreigners  because  of  its  poorly  prepared  fare; 
to-day  it  is  precisely  the  cuisine  in  which  her  better  hotels  excel. 
The  Reichshof,  the  Savoy,  the  Metropole,  the  Kaiserhof  are 
hotels  which  in  that  respect  have  hardly  their  equal  elsewhere. 

The  obverse  and  unpleasant  side  of  this  picture  is  the  simul- 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  201 

taneotts  and  very  general  lowering  of  the  national  standard  of 
honesty,  trustworthiness,  truthfulness,  and  morality.  To  bear 
out  this  charge  it  is  but  necessary  to  point  to  the  official  statistics. 
They  show  a  steady  and  enormous  increase  in  crimes  against 
property  and  against  morality;  in  the  case  of  the  former  there 
has  been  since  1870  an  increase  of  500  per  cent.,  and  of  the  latter 
the  fourfold  number  is  now  being  committed.  Not  only  have 
thefts,  burglaries,  pocket -picking,  and  all  the  ordinary  forms 
of  dishonesty  become  frightfully  common  throughout  Germany, 
but  the  most  cunningly  devised  crimes  of  that  nature,  and  the 
"slickest"  cases  of  cheating,  embezzlement,  and  swindles  of 
every  kind  that  we  hear  of  in  this  country,  are  now  every-day 
occurrences  in  erstwhile  innocent  and  unsophisticated  Germany. 
Such  a  case  of  gigantic  and  successful  swindling  as  that  by  the 
president  of  a  large  Cassel  bank,  by  which  some  130  millions  of 
marks  (about  $32,000,000)  were  diverted  from  the  rightful 
owners,  criminal  history  does  not  tell  of  a  second  time. 

But  even  more  astonishing  is  the  showing  Germany  makes  in 
the  matter  of  morality.  The  simplicity  and  purity  of  manners 
on  which  she  justly  prided  herself  in  former  days,  and  which 
enabled  her  writers  to  draw  many  a  parallel  with  France  flatter- 
ing to  their  own  self-respect,  must  be  looked  for  in  vain  to-day. 
The  relations  between  the  sexes  have  never  been  in  Germany,  so 
far  as  history  teaches  us,  as  lax  as  they  are  to-day.  Certainly, 
Berlin  in  this  respect  is  far  worse  than  any  other  city  in  the 
empire,  and  there  is  no  denying  the  fact  that  in  many  of  the 
small  towns  and  in  some  of  the  country  districts  conditions  will 
even  to-day  compare  rather  favourably  with  those  in  some  other 
countries  that  could  be  named.  But  on  the  whole  the  preva- 
lence of  immorality  in  every  form  is  simply  amazing.  In  Berlin 
particularly,  where  the  increase  in  wealth  and  in  luxury  has  been 
most  rapid  and  marked,  conditions  are  well-nigh  on  a  par  with 
those  in  Paris.  A  canker  is  gnawing  there  at  family  life  in  every 
shape.  The  number  of  women  of  loose  morals  has  been  esti- 
mated by  local  writers  at  150,000,  and  they  not  only  infest  the 
leading  streets  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  but  they  pene- 
trate private  houses  in  the  most  respectable  neighbourhoods,  and 
this  to  an  almost  incredible  extent.  Young  and  unmarried  men 
of  the  middle  and  higher  classes  almost  without  exception  lead 


202  GERMANY 

dissolute  and  immoral  lives,  and  the  horror  and  disgrace  of  that 
peculiar  form  of  union  which  Alphonse  Daudet  has  so  powerfully 
depicted  in  his  "Sappho,"  and  which  in  Berlin  is  euphoniously 
styled  "feste  Verhaltnisse,"  permeates  there  every  strata  of 
society,  and  often  leads  to  vile  tragedies.  It  saps  the  vitality 
of  and  morally  destroys  young  and  otherwise  promising  men  of 
the  better  classes  by  the  hundred  thousand. 

Here  one  touches,  in  fact,  upon  one  of  the  sorest  spots  in  the 
social  fabric  of  the  Germany  of  to-day.  While  the  labouring 
classes  everywhere  marry  too  early,  often  before  attaining 
maturity,  the  reverse  is  the  general  practice  with  the  middle  and 
higher  classes.  Primarily  this  custom  of  late  marriages  is  due 
to  the  increasing  difficulties  of  earning  enough  to  support  a 
family  in  decent  comfort.  This  is  the  main  obstacle  in  the  road 
for  the  average  young  man,  and  it  is  a  great  one.  With  the 
present  conditions  it  seems,  indeed,  impossible  to  overcome  it. 
For  with  an  educational  standard  so  high  as  to  keep  the  youth 
at  school  till  eighteen  or  twenty,  a  heavy  charge  upon  his  parents, 
and  then,  for  another  four  or  six  years,  either  at  the  university,  at 
some  technical  or  commercial  high  school,  or  in  apprenticeship, 
still  entirely  supported  by  his  family;  then  serving  his  one-year's, 
volunteership  in  the  army,  again  at  great  expense  to  his  parents ; 
and  next  to  partially  or  wholly  support  him  during  the  first  five 
or  ten  years  of  his  official  or  unofficial  career — and  these  are 
about  the  average  conditions  in  the  struggle  for  existence  with 
the  young  man  of  the  better  classes — there  seems  indeed  no  way 
to  make  the  young  man  -self-supporting,  less  still  to  put  him  in  a 
financial  condition  to  marry,  before  he  is  thirty  or  thirty-five 
years  of  age.  Indeed,  the  present  average  age  of  marriage  with 
him  shows  a  tendency  to  advance  still  further — many  thousands 
can  only  afford  to  marry  at  forty  and  after.  By  that  time,  given 
the  general  indulgence  shown  by  society  toward  his  vices  and 
toward  his  laxity  in  morals,  and  given  further  the  constant  and 
many-sided  temptations  and  allurements  of  bachelor  life  in 
Berlin  and  in  all  other  large  German  cities  to-day,  the  candidate 
for  wedlock  is  in  most  cases  a  whitened  sepulchre,  a  man  possess- 
ing a  great  fund  of  knowledge  as  to  every  form  of  dissolute  city 
life,  but  usually  also  a  physique  which  is  no  longer  intact. 

To  partially,  and  in  many  cases  wholly,  overcome  the  difficul- 


SOCIAL   CUSTOMS  203 

ties  of  a  financial  nature  that  prevent  marriage,  the  dowry  has 
become  a  settled  institution.  Daughters  receive  marriage  por- 
tions, wherever  German  fathers  can  manage  it,  large  enough  to 
yield  an  income  which  added  to  the  modest  earnings  of  the  young 
man  himself  would  support  the  couple  in  comparative  ease. 
Such  portions  vary,  of  course,  greatly,  according  to  circum- 
stances, but  at  the  present  rate  of  interest  they  usually  amount 
to  a  minimum  of  100,000  marks,  or  about  $25,000.  The  standard 
of  life  being  much  higher  than  formerly,  and  prices  of  necessaries, 
above  all  foodstuffs,  having  also  risen  enormously  in  price,  it 
takes  about  10,000  marks  per  annum  nowadays  for  a  couple 
belonging  by  birth  and  position  to  the  better  classes  to  make 
both  ends  meet.  Hence,  in  large  part,  the  keen  race  for  wealth 
in  this  part  of  the  population.  However,  the  great  majority  of 
German  fathers  even  in  the  higher  stratum  of  the  middle  class, 
do  not  possess  fortunes  large  enough  to  enable  them  to  give 
their  daughters  such  portions,  and  that  again  leads  to  an 
enormous  number  of  women  of  marriageable  age  who  are  con- 
demned to  single  blessedness.  The  latest  official  statistics  com- 
puted their  number  at  considerably  over  two  millions.  These 
unsatisfactory  conditions  have  also  led,  so  far  as  the  unmarried 
women  are  concerned,  to  the  acute  character  of  the  woman 
question,  and  of  the  movement  resulting  therefrom.  However, 
it  ought  also  to  be  mentioned  that  the  German  girl  of  to-day  has 
greatly  altered  in  character.  She  is  no  longer  that  nice,  simple 
and  unassuming  creature  which  the  novels  of  Marlitt  have 
acquainted  Americans  with.  She  sees  luxury  all  around  her, 
and  she  naturally  wants  her  share  of  it.  Love  in  a  cottage  is  no 
longer  her  ideal.  She  desires  the  comforts  of  life,  and  would 
rather  not  marry  at  all  than  forego  them. 

This  is  just  a  bare  outline  of  the  gravely  disturbing  factors  that 
are  exerting  a  most  unwholesome  influence  upon  the  marriage 
market  in  Germany.  With  the  present  trend  of  things  these 
conditions  are  much  more  likely  to  increase  in  difficulty  than  to 
mend.  They  form  a  constant  and  favourite  theme  of  discussion 
for  German  writers  on  social  and  economic  questions,  and  no 
less  a  personage  than  the  most  noted  of  living  German  philoso- 
phers, Eduard  von  Hartmann,  has  devoted  a  whole  book  to  the 
subject.  All  sorts  of  solutions  have  been  proposed,  including  the 


204  GERMANY 

most  impracticable  and  futile.  The  imposing  of  special  high 
taxes  on  the  wilful  and  well-to-do  bachelor  has  been  a  favourite 
proposition  in  this  connection,  and  it  was  stated  at  one  time  that 
various  German  state  governments  had  seriously  considered  the 
subject.  But  nothing  so  far  has  come  of  it,  nor  is  it  probable 
that  anything  like  such  a  remedy  would  effect  even  a  partial 
cure  of  the  evil,  since  that  lies  much  deeper,  and  is  really  an  out- 
growth of  fundamental  conditions  of  the  German  life  of  to-day. 

The  gross  immorality  in  the  capital  of  the  empire  also  aroused 
public  attention,  and  some  time  ago  things  had  got  to  such  a 
pass  that  the  women  of  the  city  felt  it  their  duty  to  solicit  the 
aid  of  the  government  in  protecting  themselves  and  their  daugh- 
ters from  the  contamination,  and  their  sons  from  the  dangers, 
of  daily  contact  with  the  enormous  number  of  "ladies  of  easy 
virtue."  For  this  contact  was  not  only  on  the  public  streets, 
but  as  well  in  the  houses  where  they  and  their  families  inhabited 
apartments.  The  "Sittenpolizei" — i.  e.,  that  branch  of  the  metro- 
politan police  supposed  to  keep  a  close  control  of  the  fallen 
women,  were  then  given  new  instructions,  but  that  had  a  most 
unfortunate  effect,  for  outrageous  arrests  of  perfectly  respectable 
girls  and  married  women  began  to  multiply,  not  only  in  Berlin, 
but,  under  similar  instructions  to  the  local  police,  in  Cologne, 
Frankfort-on-Main,  and  other  cities.  Finally,  a  national  league 
of  German  women  was  formed  to  combat  the  whole  evil,  and  a 
petition  was  presented  to  the  Kaiser,  bearing  the  signatures  of 
about  25,000  of  the  most  reputable  ladies  in  the  higher  walks  of 
life,  in  which  a  regulation  of  the  matter  was  asked  for.  But 
nothing  was  done  either  then  or  since,  and  it  is  even  to-day 
risky  for  respectable  women  to  appear  without  male  escort,  after 
sundown,  in  the  leading  thoroughfares  of  the  larger  German 
cities. 

The  two  criminal  trials  in  which  aristocratic  members  of  the 
Club  der  Harmlosen  (Club  of  Innocents)  were  involved,  let  in 
a  flood  of  light  on  some  of  the  darkest  features  of  high  life  in 
Germany.  The  dissolute  habits  in  vogue  there  to-day  rival  those 
of  the  same  classes  in  nations  whom  the  Germans  had  all  along 
held  their  moral  inferiors.  Scandals  of  the  worst  type,  and  dis- 
closing the  prevalence  of  depraved  tastes  in  those  upper  circles 
whom  the  Kaiser  once  called  the  "Edelste  der  Nation"  (Loftiest 


SOCIAL   CUSTOMS  205 

of  the  Nation),  are  of  frequent  occurrence,  although  the  police 
in  most  cases  squelch  judicial  investigation.  Another  notable 
fact  is  the  great  increase  of  divorces,  and  the  ease  with  which 
they  are  obtained.  Under  the  operation  of  the  new  Civil  Code, 
in  force  throughout  the  Empire,  this  increase  has  gone  on  at 
an  accelerated  pace. 

Thus,  there  is  no  denying  the  palpable  fact  that  under 
new  conditions  the  moral  standard  of  the  nation  has  been  very 
perceptibly  lowered,  and  this  is  true  of  all  classes  of  the 
population. 

Under  the  political  and  social  preponderance  of  Prussia  another 
peculiarity  has  become  very  noticeable  in  the  empire.  The 
police  exerts  such  an  amount  of  power,  and  plays  such  a  promi- 
nent r61e  in  public  and  private  life,  as  to  have  led  to  the  charge, 
frequently  made  in  the  various  legislative  bodies  of  Germany, 
that  the  country  is  a  "Polizeistaat,"  viz.,  one  where  the  police  is 
paramount.  And  there  seems,  indeed,  good  reason  for  making 
this  charge.  The  police  in  Germany  fills  a  much  more  con- 
spicuous place  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  with  the  single 
possible  exception  of  Russia.  According  to  the  best  official 
authority,  the  standard  work  of  Count  Hue  de  Grais,  Royal 
Prussian  Government  President,  the  police  is  purposely  so  organ- 
ized as  to  permeate  and  to  a  certain  extent  control  the  whole 
political  and  social  fabric  of  the  country.  Its  functions  are  so 
manifold,  they  so  constantly  intertwine  with  those  of  the  civil 
and  military  authorities,  and  its  aid  is  so  unceasingly  required  by 
every  department  of  the  Government  as  well  as  by  the  mass  of 
subjects,  that  one  may  well  say  the  German  police  is  omnipotent 
and  almost  omniscient.  It  is  divided  into  the  criminal  depart- 
ment (with  its  large  and  important  secret  branch),  the  "security 
and  accident"  police,  the  "public  order"  and  the  "morality" 
police.  There  are  subdivisions,  too,  such  as  the  sanitary  police. 
The  organization  of  this  vast  body  of  police,  numbering  in  all 
several  hundred  thousands,  is  not  uniform.  It  differs  not  only 
in  the  various  States  of  Germany,  but  also  in  the  urban  and  rural 
districts.  For  the  latter  there  is  a  separate  body  of  "gensdarmes," 
mostly  mounted,  and  armed  with  swoid,  carbine,  and  revolver. 
The  urban  police  is  usually  uniformed  very  much  in  the  style 
of  the  Prussian  infantry,  and  armed  with  a  short  sword,  and  in 


sob  GERMANY 

some  cases  with  a  revolver  as  well.  The  mounted  police  in  the 
towns  and  cities  forms  only  about  five  per  cent,  of  the  total. 

The  system  is  peculiar,  too,  in  this,  that  while  the  central 
government  has  in  all  cases  the  appointive  power,  the  police  is 
not  paid  out  of  state  funds  but  out  of  local  and  provincial  ones. 
As  to  its  personnel,  it  is  recruited  entirely  from  the  army — i.e., 
from  the  large  corps  of  non-commissioned  officers  who  have 
served  a  certain  term  of  years  and  thereby  acquired  the  claim  to 
subordinate  government  positions.  This  fact  accounts  for  the 
strong  military  spirit  pervading  the  entire  German  police,  and 
this  is  increased  by  the  fact  that  the  officers — i.  e.,  lieutenants, 
captains,  majors,  colonels,  and  presidents  of  police,  formerly 
held  similar  commissions  in  the  regular  German  army.  The  uni- 
forms worn  by  these  officers  differ  greatly  from  those  of  their 
men,  both  in  color  and  cut,  and  are  very  handsome  and  dressy. 
The  pay,  both  of  men  and  officers,  is  low.  The  men  get  on  an 
average  not  more  than  fifty  to  sixty  cents  a  day,  besides  their 
clothes.  The  officers  receive  about  thirty  dollars  per  month  in 
the  lower  grades,  and  from  that  up  to  fifty  or  sixty.  They  are 
entitled  to  pensions  when  invalided  or  disabled,  and  in  case  of 
death  their  widows  receive  small  annuities. 

As  might  be  expected  from  their  antecedents  and  exclusively 
military  training,  the  German  police  is  autocratic,  puffed  up  with 
a  sense  of  its  extreme  importance,  and  efficient  only  in  routine 
work,  but  utterly  lacking  initiative,  tact,  or  higher  brain  power. 
Their  hours  are  long,  but  the  amount  of  real  work  expected  is  not 
as  large  nor  as  arduous  as  that  of  an  American  policeman.  They 
are  nearly  always  honest,  truthful,  and  well-meaning,  and  cor- 
ruption and  venality  are  not  conspicuous  characteristics  of  the 
force.  The  discipline  maintained  is  very  strict,  and  insubordina- 
tion practically  unknown  among  them.  Their  attitude  toward 
the  public  differs  wholly  from  that  in  other  countries.  They 
regard  citizens  in  the  same  light  as  recruits,  as  beings  who  need 
constant  surveillance  and  a  rough  sort  of  verbal  instruction  in 
all  their  duties  toward  the  government.  In  a  word,  they  do  not 
consider  themselves  as  the  servants  of  the  public,  but  distinc- 
tively as  the  organs  of  the  public's  master,  the  government.  It 
is  this  mental  attitude,  no  doubt,  which  accounts  for  the  unpop- 
ularity of  the  police  in  Germany.  It  is  exceedingly  rare  that 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  207 

the  public  will  side  with,  or  assist,  policemen  in  the  discharge  of 
their  duties,  in  cases  of  arrest,  or  in  the  maintenance  of  public 
order. 

But  that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  everybody  almost  is 
forced  to  come  in  daily  contact  with  the  police.  Just  to  enu- 
merate a  few  such  occasions,  there  is  the  domestic  help,  which  is 
strictly  controlled  by  the  police  of  each  district;  there  is  the 
system  of  state  pensions  for  the  labouring  classes,  which  is  also 
rigorously  supervised  by  the  police;  there  is  every  detail  of  the 
internal  management  of  each  dwelling,  and  the  relations  between 
landlord  and  tenant,  which  the  police  superintend;  there  is  the 
question  of  the  discharge  of  each  citizen's  military  duties,  and 
of  his  tax  burdens;  there  is  the  question  of  contagious  diseases, 
of  the  hundreds  of  sanitary  regulations  which  are  severely 
enforced  in  every  German  household ;  there  are  the  thousands  of 
minute  police  regulations,  and,  of  course,  the  whole  broad  field 
of  criminality — in  all  of  these  matters  it  is  the  police  which 
the  public  has  to  deal  with  primarily,  often  exclusively.  Each 
inhabitant  of  Germany,  whether  native  or  foreign,  must,  besides, 
furnish,  at  stated  intervals,  documentary  proof  of  his  identity, 
etc.,  and  each  hotel  or  boarding-house  owner  must  do  the  same 
regarding  newly  arrived  guests.  With  all  this  network  of  in- 
formation, extending  down  to  the  most  intimate  details  of  private 
life,  the  police,  as  a  body,  is  always  in  possession  of  absolute  and 
precise  knowledge  as  to  everybody  residing  within  the  confines 
of  the  broad  empire,  or  merely  sojourning  there  for  a  brief 
spell.  They  have  discretionary  powers  of  the  most  far-reaching 
importance,  and  can  expel  obnoxious  foreigners,  or  German 
subjects  from  other  parts  of  the  empire,  without  vouchsafing  any 
explanation.  In  a  word,  to  lead  a  moderately  quiet  and  undis- 
turbed life  in  Germany,  one  does  wisely  to  maintain  as  friendly  a 
footing  with  the  German  police  as  they  will  permit.  Of  course, 
there  are  the  courts  of  the  land,  both  civil  and  criminal,  and  in 
many  cases  these  may  be  appealed  to,  and  in  some  cases  they 
may  amend  or  annul  the  first  police  decision.  But  such  appeals 
necessarily  involve  great  loss  of  time  and  money,  are  always 
uncertain  in  their  final  issue,  and  may  only  be  entertained  within 
specified  limits.  So  that  it  may  be  truly  said  that  the  police  is, 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  the  only  arbiter  between  man  and  man 


208  GERMANY 

and  between  government  and  subject  in  Germany.  Its  tre- 
mendous influence  will  therefore  be  apparent  to  the  reader. 

Another  radical  change  wrought  in  the  German  character  by 
the  events  of  the  last  thirty  years  is  the  elimination  of  that 
charming  spirit  of  cosmopolitanism  which  used  to  be  one  of  the 
distinguishing  traits  of  the  nation,  and  the  substitution  of 
jingoism  for  it.  Of  all  the  civilized  peoples  on  the  globe,  the 
German  alone  was  the  prophet  and  the  bearer  alike  of  that  high- 
est fruit  of  mental  culture,  a  universal  mind  and  an  unbiassed 
appreciation  of  the  good  to  be  found  in  every  nation.  The  greatest 
names  in  German  literature,  science  and  philosophy,  men  like 
Gosthe,  Schiller,  Lessing,  Humboldt,  Hegel,  were  the  embodi- 
ment of  this  conception,  and  nearly  all  the  qualities  that  have 
made  Germany  eminent  in  every  department  of  thought  were, 
directly  or  indirectly,  the  outflow  and  product  of  this  cosmo- 
politan spirit.  One  may  rejoice  at  the  unification  of  Germany, 
and  at  the  vigourous  development  of  national  pride,  but  from 
every  point  of  view  the  disappearance  of  that  higher  form  of 
amor  patriae  is  to  be  regretted.  Above  all,  however,  the  present 
type  of  jingoism,  rampant  everywhere  in  the  empire,  is  unlovely, 
and  totally  out  of  accordance  with  the  best  qualities  of  the  race. 

The  spectacle  is  all  the  more  inexplicable  as  jingoism  of  this 
irrational  kind  militates  against  all  the  instincts  of  the  race, 
and  it  is  utterly  without  excuse  in  a  country  of  the  geograph- 
ical position  and  the  historical  past  of  Germany.  For  jingoism 
is  usually  due  to  ignorance  of  the  real  character  of  other  nations. 
The  Germans  possess  the  best  and  most  diffused  knowledge  of 
other  nations.  Their  very  position  in  the  heart  of  Europe,  and 
their  great  love  of  travel,  of  a  knowledge  of  foreign  languages 
and  literatures,  has  kept  them  from  that  insular  bent  of  mind 
which  is  the  heirloom  of  their  British  cousins,  and  from  that 
similar  trend  of  thought  which,  owing  to  his  wide  separation 
from  Europe,  used  to  distinguish  in  a  minor  degree  the  American. 
Even  to-day,  deep  down  below  that  thick  veneer  of  disdain 
affected  for  all  other  nations,  the  typical  German  harbours  an 
instinctive  appreciation  of  those  traits  in  other  nations  which 
he  lacks.  But  the  difference  between  former  days  and  now  is 
this,  that  he  stifles  this  inner  consciousness  in  favour  of  his  self- 
created  ideal :  the  German  of  to-day. 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  209 

It  must,  however,  not  be  assumed  that  jingoism  has  it  all  to 
itself  in  the  Germany  of  to-day.  The  best  minds  of  the  nation 
are  arrayed  against  it.  The  government,  strong  and  to  a  great 
extent  independent  of  public  opinion,  has  not  yet  capitulated 
with  it.  The  weightiest  and  best  reputed  publications  war 
against  it.  But  the  jingoistic  current  of  thought  is  so  potent 
just  now  (and  seems  to  gather  more  momentum  each  year)  that 
at  present  it  seems  only  a  question  of  time  when  this  newly 
engrafted  sentiment  will  sweep  everything  before  it,  as  the  same 
sentiment  has  repeatedly  done  in  France.  That  this  would  be  a 
most  unfortunate  thing  for  Germany  needs  hardly  pointing  out. 

There  are  other  newly  acquired  characteristics  in  the  latter- 
day  German.  I  will  mention  the  fact  that  from  a  preeminently 
reading  nation  the  Germans  are  becoming  the  very  reverse. 
There  is  an  ever-swelling  chorus  of  complaint  going  up  among 
publishers  and  authors  that  the  demand  for  reading  matter  is 
diminishing  all  the  time.  The  magazines  are  full  of  this  plaint ; 
so  are  the  more  serious  newspapers.  And  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  there  is  truth  behind  it.  Teachers  and  university  professors 
echo  the  lament.  Since  that  new  and  untranslatable  German 
word:  "schneidig"  was  coined,  a  word  which  covers  a  multitude 
of  sins  with  a  cloak  of  nationalism,  whole  strata  of  German 
society  have  begun  to  affect,  or  to  really  feel,  a  deep  contempt  for 
books,  for  book  learning,  and  for  all  that  books  can  teach.  This 
curious  feeling  is  particularly  prevalent  among  the  higher  classes, 
and  among  them  men  like  Dr.  Carl  Peters,  who  hanged  his  negro 
servants  in  Africa  when  they  crossed  him,  and  Hermann  von 
Wissmann,  who  made  bloody  campaigns  against  defenseless 
negro  races  in  German  East  Africa,  and  obtained  the  highest 
honours  and  decorations  from  the  Kaiser  for  it,  are  pointed  out  to 
the  young  generation  as  patterns  to  follow. 

Among  the  characteristics  acquired  and  worthy  of  all  praise, 
a  greater  degree,  and  a  much  wider  spread,  of  politeness,  and 
a  higher  regard  for  the  amenities  of  life,  must  be  mentioned. 
The  German  of  the  better  classes  is  to-day  almost  outdoing  the 
French,  among  whom  a  retrograde  movement  in  this  respect 
is  noticeable,  in  fine  and  polished  manners.  Intercourse  has 
become  more  ceremonious  than  it  used  to  be,  and  the  amount 
of  courteous  phraseology  indulged  in  on  social  occasions  is  truly 


GERMANY 

overpowering.  Gallantry  toward  the  fair  sex  is  also  among 
these  recent  accomplishments,  and  the  fine  gradation  of  bows, 
the  correct  amount  of  honeyed  words,  and  the  number  and 
quality  of  the  hand-kisses  in  his  intercourse  with  ladies  forms 
to-day  an  important  item  in  the  teachings  given  the  German 
youth.  Pleasant  observances  on  festive  occasions,  such  as 
birthdays,  after  balls,  at  anniversaries,  and  the  like,  have  been 
brought  into  a  regular  system,  and  tend  to  make  life  more  of  a 
pleasant  illusion  than  it  is  in  more  matter-of-fact  countries. 
Social  hypocrisy,  in  fact,  and  what  Max  Nordau  so  harshly 
termed  "conventional  lies,"  form  a  leading  and  growing  feature 
in  the  life  of  the  higher  classes  there. 

With  that,  however,  a  much  greater  attention  is  also  paid  to 
the  " substantiate "  of  social  intercourse.  German  hospitality, 
once  hearty  but  rough,  is  now  refined  and  dainty.  It  will  no 
longer  happen  to  you,  in  visiting  Germany  with  a  bunch  of  good 
letters  of  introduction  in  your  pocket — and  without  them  you 
had  better  postpone  your  visit,  as  nobody  would  extend  any 
courtesies  to  you — that  Professor  Cloudland  will  at  once  receive 
you,  enter  into  an  intimate  conversation  of  two  hours'  length 
with  you,  and  then  press  you  to  stay  and  share  an  informal  dinner 
consisting  of  boiled  beef  and  carrots.  No ;  to-day  he  will  re- 
quire you  to  first  notify  him  of  your  arrival  in  town.  He  will 
then  invite  you  to  call,  exchange  for  five  minutes  the  badinage 
of  the  hour ;  then  he  will  leave  his  card  at  your  hotel,  and  a  week 
or  so  later  he  will  send  you  a  formal  and  exquisitely  phrased 
invitation  to  an  excellent  dinner,  where  you  will  also  meet  some 
men  worth  talking  to.  He  will  not  wear  a  frowzy  and  ink-stained 
dressing  gown  on  any  of  these  occasions,  but  will  be  most  cor- 
rectly and  becomingly  attired.  His  study  will  not  be  reeking  with 
dust  and  stale  tobacco  smoke  from  an  antediluvian  porcelain 
pipe ;  neither  will  disorder  reign  supreme  among  his  musty  tomes. 
He  will  instead  be  seen  in  a  cosily  furnished  room  where  every- 
thing appeals  to  a  refined  taste,  and  his  dining-room  will  be  the 
perfection  of  gastronomic  appropriateness. 

These  are  the  changed  conditions  you  will  find — and  not 
wholly  to  your  sorrow.  But  the  choice  flavour  of  that  un- 
conventional hospitality  of  old  is  gone,  and  you  may  miss  it 
in  spite  of  the  pate  de  joie  gras  and  the  bottle  of  exquisitely 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  211 

frappe*d  Moet  et  Chandon.  Asthetics  is  one  thing,  and  genu- 
ineness is  another. 

An  intense  modernness  pervades  social  intercourse.  The 
topics  of  conversation  alone  show  that.  It  is  no  longer  on 
such  unprofitable  themes  as  philosophy,  literature  or  art 
in  the  abstract — but  it  runs  on  the  latest  sensation  on  the 
stage,  on  the  races  or  some  other  sporting  event,  on  the  fashion- 
able fad  of  the  hour,  or  on  the  morning's  flurry  on  'change. 
Country  life  and  customs  are  not  what  they  once  were.  How 
could  they  in  an  age  when  Agrarianism  and  wily  politics  have 
become  synonyms,  and  when  the  larger  rural  estates  get  their 
help  every  spring  from  far-away  Poland  or  Russia  ?  In  lieu  of 
a  smiling,  pastoral  landscape,  redolent  with  the  scent  of  wild 
thyme,  and  peopled  with  rosy-cheeked  folk  who  were  charmingly 
ignorant  of  city  ways,  you  will  find  to-day  the  tall  smokestacks 
of  the  distillery,  and  will  hear  the  steam  escaping  from  the  beet- 
sugar  factory.  These  rustic  denizens  know  every  move  of  the 
stock  market,  and  usually  receive  daily  telegraphic  reports  from 
their  agent  in  town.  Their  egotism  and  their  greed  for  wealth 
are  just  as  keen  as,  but  perhaps  a  trifle  more  outspoken  than, 
that  of  their  city  prototypes.  The  social  question,  too,  has 
penetrated  the  rural  districts,  and  the  "hands,"  male  and 
female,  have  begun  to  join  the  Socialist  ranks.  The  German 
country  parson,  that  glorious  and  mild  old  man,  is  the  only 
person  in  the  new  picture  who  has  not  appreciably  changed.  He 
has  remained  the  same  lovable  idealist,  and  from  his  grey-walled 
manse,  hidden  in  grapevine  and  honeysuckle,  the  breed  still 
goes  forth  to  do  battle  with  the  philistine  world.  In  him  and 
his  kind  lies  the  redemption  of  Germany  from  her  present  creed 
of  bald  utilitarianism. 

The  last  official  census  gave  Germany  a  million  more  females 
than  males.  This  alone  will  account  for  the  acuteness  of  the 
movement  for  the  emancipation  of  woman  there.  But,  as 
pointed  out  above,  the  marriage  question  itself  is  much  more 
difficult  than  in  most  other  countries,  owing  to  a  variety  of  causes, 
but  mainly  to  the  late  age  at  which  men  of  the  middle  and  higher 
classes  are  in  a  financial  condition  to  marry.  And  with  spinsters 
to  the  tune  of  over  two  millions,  it  is  quite  natural  that  the 
German  women  seek  new  fields  of  activity.  This  fact  has  come  to 


2i2  GERMANY 

be  generally  recognized,  even  by  the  most  conservative  of  both 
sexes.  Several  years  ago  there  was  an  international  woman's 
congress  in  Berlin,  and  that  showed  the  world  for  the  first  time 
that  Germany  had  on  her  part  entered  in  earnest  on  the  task 
of  reforming  social  conditions  which  hold  back  from  woman  what 
rightfully  belongs  to  her — a  chance  to  earn  a  living  when  her 
chance  in  the  marriage  lottery  has  narrowed  down  more  and 
more. 

The  old  avenues  have,  of  course,  remained  open  to  her,  those 
of  teacher,  governess,  ladies'  companion,  housekeeper,  seam-- 
stress, milliner,  dressmaker,  etc.,  as  well  as  the  stage,  the  broad 
field  of  domestic  service,  the  management  of  restaurants,  cafe's, 
and  hotels.  But  of  late  years  she  has  cut  more  and  more  into 
those  domains  formerly  wholly  or  overwhelmingly  claimed  by 
men.  The  retail  trade  is  now  very  largely  in  female  hands. 
Several  hundreds  of  thousands  have  found  employment  in 
factories  and  industrial  establishments  of  every  kind.  In  jour- 
nalism the  German  woman  has  conquered  quite  a  large  field  of 
her  own,  and  of  the  professional  writers  of  fiction  about  fifty  per 
cent,  are  women,  among  them  many  who  enjoy  popularity  and 
its  emoluments.  Several  branches  of  the  lower  government 
and  municipal  service  have  been  opened  to  her,  and  the  tele- 
phone operators  are  nearly  all  women.  Among  the  trades,  too, 
she  has  secured  her  share.  The  typesetters,  for  instance,  show 
a  growing  percentage  of  women,  and  among  the  lithographers, 
draughtsmen,  and  artists  of  every  description  they  have  found 
an  increasing  sphere  of  usefulness.  She  has  made  her  way,  even 
in  such  trades  as  landscape  gardening  and  horticulture;  in  cer- 
tain lines  of  manufacture  she  has  taken  the  lead,  and  the  census 
showed  at  least  three  female  blacksmiths  and  coppersmiths  in 
the  empire.  Of  late,  too,  she  has  obtained  the  government 
permission,  against  the  violent  opposition  of  the  men,  to  become 
an  apothecary  or  druggist,  of  course  only  after  passing  the 
rather  rigourous  government  examination. 

But  it  has  been  the  fight  for  admission  to  the  learned  pro- 
fessions, and  to  the  public  or  private  institutions  which  equip 
their  inmates  for  them,  which  tested  the  mettle  of  the  German 
woman,  as  it  did  that  of  her  English  and  American  sister  before 
her.  The  German  governments,  national  and  State,  took  for 


SOCIAL   CUSTOMS  213 

many  years  a  consistently  hostile  attitude  as  to  this.  Both 
the  German  professors  and  their  male  students  were  likewise 
adverse  to  the  admiss:on  of  women  on  terms  of  equality.  The 
question  was  ventilated  in  the  Reichstag  and  in  nearly  every 
other  German  legislature,  year  after  year,  always  in  a  sense 
hostile  to  the  innovation.  However,  the  more  enlightened  part 
of  the  German  public  gradually  modified  its  views  on  the  matter 
and  a  portion  of  the  press  followed.  A  more  vigourous  and  better 
directed  campaign  was  made  during  the  past  five  or  six  years,  and 
the  force  of  public  opinion  won  in  the  end.  Doctor  Bosse,  the 
former  Prussian  Secretary  of  Public  Instruction,  who  had  opposed, 
on  scriptural  grounds,  the  admission  of  women  to  the  professions, 
was  at  last  displaced,  and  his  successor  has  proved  more  amenable 
to  reason  and  to  progressive  ideas.  The  authorities  of  the  other 
German  States  had  either  preceded  him  in  this  respect,  like  those 
of  Baden  and  Saxony,  or  they  followed  suit. 

To-day  the  larger  number  of  the  German  universities  and 
technical  or  art  high  schools  are  open  to  women,  and  in  some  of 
them  they  are  admitted  to  examination  and  graduation.  They 
can  now  practice  medicine  and  dentistry,  under  certain  limita- 
tions, and  may  become  doctors  of  philosophy  in  all  its  branches. 
The  practice  of  the  law  is  still  forbidden  them,  and  the  govern- 
ment career  in  all  its  higher  branches  is  also  closed  to  them — as 
yet.  There  are  at  this  present  writing  some  300  female  students 
in  Berlin  University  alone,  and  a  goodly  number  in  Heidelberg, 
Gottingen,  and  several  other  universities.  In  some  others, 
like  Munich,  they  are  still  excluded.  The  attitude  of  professors 
has  on  the  whole  become  somewhat  more  friendly,  especially 
if  the  woman  happens  to  be  a  foreigner,  but  the  students  them- 
selves have  not  so  far  qualified  their  tone  of  enmity,  and  there 
are  still  quite  often  such  scenes  enacted  by  them  as  when  they 
left,  with  a  great  show  of  ostentatious  indignation,  the  clinic  of 
a  famous  Berlin  professor  of  medicine,  when  they  saw  the  first 
female  student  enter  it.  But  this  remnant  of  the  old  feeling  of 
opposition  will  likewise  disappear  within  a  few  years,  no  doubt. 
Woman  is  winning  her  way,  slowly  but  surely,  in  Germany  as 
elsewhere. 

Of  course,  with  all  these  changes  the  character  of  the  mar- 
riage relation  has  not  been  exempt  from  them.  A  generation 


214  GERMANY 

ago  the  German  wife  was  by  no  means  the  equal  of  the  husband. 
She  knew  her  place,  and  confined  herself  to  it.  The  rights  of  a 
mother  were  always  conceded  to  her  rather  fully,  and  they  are 
to-day.  But  her  wifely  position  was  that  of  distinct  inferiority 
to  the  husband.  She  was  not  allowed  to  exert  influence  on  his 
public  career.  Her  advice  was  neither  sought  nor  accepted  on 
business  or  financial  questions.  Wherever  the  intellect  is  the 
decisive  factor,  she  had  to  remain  mute  and  tamely  submit.  At 
home  it  was  similar.  Her  subserviency  to  the  master  and 
husband,  to  the  brother  or  father,  were  traits  of  national  life 
which  shocked  the  female  guest  from  other  lands.  Manifesta- 
tions of  anger  or  of  serious  disapproval  at  unpalatable  decisions 
made  by  her  lord  were  rare,  and  if  at  all  indulged  in  were 
severely  frowned  upon.  As  soon  as  her  sons  were  grown,  the 
moral  serfdom  under  which  the  husband  had  held  her  was 
enlarged  in  its  sphere,  for  she  then  became  the  dutiful  slave  of 
her  own  male  offspring  as  well. 

It  would  be  going  too  far  to  claim  that  all  this  has  been  quite 
done  away  with.  The  German  wife  is  still  much  more  humble 
and  submissive  than  either  her  French  or  American  sister.  It  is 
amusing,  even  to-day,  to  listen  to  the  conversation  of  a  bevy 
of  German  wives  at  one  of  their  well-beloved  "afternoon  coffees." 
Every  third  phrase  begins  with  "Mein  Mann"  (my  husband). 
It  is  "my  husband  thinks  this,"  "my  husband  says  so,"  "my 
husband  in  such  a  case  always  does  so  and  so" — ad  infinitum. 
Never  by  any  chance  does  one  of  them  say  "/  think  this,"  etc. 
Even  the  widowed  ladies  are  still  so  much  wedded  to  this  self- 
abasing  habit  of  thought  and  action  that  in  order  to  give  emphasis 
to  what  they  wish  to  inculcate  they  call  up  the  manes  of  their 
deceased  husbands  and  make  them  give  point  and  substance  to 
their  own  views.  The  day  has  not  yet  passed  when  German 
sisters  will  voluntarily  or  under  but  slight  family  pressure  relin- 
quish all  their  own  aspirations  in  life,  turn  governess  or  else 
eke  out  a  miserable  and  joyless  spinster  existence  as  a  maiden 
aunt,  just  to  enable  one  of  her  brothers  to  go  to  the  university 
and  afterward  choose  an  honourable  government  career — and 
the  entire  family  council,  women  foremost,  will  approve  of 
such  self-sacrifice,  and  would  regard  her  as  one  morally  lost  if 
she  showed  a  disinclination  in  the  premises. 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  215 

Still,  for  all  that,  the  marriage  relation  has  undergone  a  great 
change  in  Germany,  partly  for  the  better,  partly  for  the  worse. 
There  is  a  diminution  of  that  strong  family  sense  and  family 
affection  which  used  to  be  chief  characteristics.  There  is  a 
diminution  of  wifely  and  unquestioning  obedience.  There  is  a 
diminution  of  martial  happiness  and  affection.  There  is  also  a 
diminution  of  mutual  solicitude  and  of  that  extreme  care  as  to 
all  creature  comforts  which  distinguished  the  German  wife  from 
all  others.  There  is  instead  a  beginning  in  independence  on  the 
part  of  the  wife — and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  new 
Imperial  Civil  Code  has  in  nowise  altered  or  bettered  the  status 
of  the  wife — and  of  a  recognition  on  the  husband's  part  of  equal 
rights  on  the  part  of  both.  There  is  a  widening  of  the  wife's 
sphere  of  influence  and  of  activity,  and  a  broadening  of  her 
mental  horizon  and  of  her  mental  equipment.  She  is  in  many 
cases  no  longer  satisfied  with  the  mere  title  of  "housewife,"  which 
the  Kaiser  has  exclusively  vindicated  to  his  spouse,  but  her 
ambition  has  begun  to  soar  for  something  higher — i.  e .,  to  become 
the  real  partner  of  her  husband,  his  sharer  in  all  that  moves  and 
concerns  him.  So,  on  the  whole,  the  change  has  been  a  whole- 
some and  beneficial  one,  and  the  tendency  in  this  direction  is 
manifestly  not  of  an  evanescent  nature.  It  will  continue. 

One  more  pleasant  feature  of  German  life  must  here  be  men- 
tioned. It  may  unhesitatingly  be  said  that  Germany  is  to-day 
the  neatest  and  tidiest  country  in  the  world,  excelling  even 
Holland's  proverbial  qualities  in  this  respect.  The  most  casual 
visitor  cannot  fail  to  notice  this.  Such  wonderful  order  and 
cleanliness  as  meet  the  eye  in  every  German  city  and  town  is 
nowhere  else  to  be  met  with.  There  was  a  time  when  Coleridge 
coined  a  little  distich  severely  reflecting  upon  the  ancient  city 
of  Cologne,  and  for  which  then  existed  abundant  cause.  But 
Cologne  to-day  is  far  cleaner  than  is  New  York  or  London,  and 
as  for  Berlin,  it  is  a  marvel  of  neatness  and  wise  municipal  econ- 
omy. Go  where  you  will  in  the  whole  empire,  and  the  same 
facts  will  strike  you  more  or  less  forcibly. 

A  few  facts  about  Berlin,  whose  municipal  management  might 
stand  in  almost  every  respect  as  a  model  for  the  other  capitals  of 
the  world,  may  be  of  interest  in  this  connection.  When  comparing 
it  with  Paris,  London,  or  New  York,  the  entire  costs  of  administra- 


216  GERMANY 

tion  are,  considered  per  capita,  fifty  per  cent.,  thirty-five  per  cent., 
and  sixty-six  per  cent,  less,  respectively.  Yet  the  results  accom- 
plished at  this  much  smaller  cost  are  immeasurably  greater. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  matter  of  street-cleaning.  The  trained 
and  efficient  corps  of  employees  attending  to  this  important  item 
in  municipal  management  is  composed  of  uniformed  youths 
working  under  the  supervision  of  trusty  and  experienced  men. 
Every  street  in  Berlin  is  swept  and  washed  at  least  once  daily. 
The  streets  in  the  busy  quarters  and  those  in  the  better  resi- 
dential portions  are  asphalted,  and  are  kept  in  perfect  condition, 
both  winter  and  summer.  But  the  stone  pavements,  too,  are 
never  allowed  to  run  down.  Both  stone  and  asphalt  or  con- 
crete pavements  are  laid  down  in  the  first  place  as  smooth  as  a 
billiard  table,  and  then  kept  so  by  frequent  mending.  Between 
April  and  October  every  street  and  avenue  is  sprinkled  and 
washed  twice  a  day,  and  the  refuse  then  removed  so  carefully  as 
to  leave  the  roadbed  devoid  of  every  foreign  matter.  A  special 
subcorps  of  boys  is  busy  during  the  entire  day  picking  up  all 
litter  and  depositing  it  in  cast-iron  and  neat-looking  chutes 
placed  in  every  block  at  convenient  distances  along  the  side- 
walks. No  single  street  in  the  whole  city  and  its  suburbs,  even 
in  the  poorest  districts,  is  allowed  to  present  at  any  time  an 
unkempt  appearance.  There  are  no  orange  peels,  no  waste  paper, 
no  animal  refuse,  no  empty  lunch  bags,  encumbering  the 
streets.  As  for  the  removal  of  snow  in  winter,  the  arrange- 
ments are  so  perfect  that  falls  of  one  or  two  inches  are  carted 
away  within  twelve  hours,  and  heavier  ones  of  from  three  to 
five  inches  usually  before  the  lapse  of  four  of  five  days.  And  this 
removal  of  snow  is  thorough.  It  applies  not  only  to  the  leading 
arteries  of  traffic,  but  to  every  street,  important  or  unimportant. 
The  primitive  appliances  used  in  removing  snow  in  American 
cities  have  been  displaced  in  Berlin  by  efficient  labour-saving 
machinery  of  special  construction  and  of  various  kinds,  and  the 
results  thus  attained  are  much  more  satisfactory. 

It  is  in  the  matter  of  street-cleaning  that  Berlin  leads  every 
other  place  on  the  globe,  and  it  is  in  this  that  the  contrast  pre- 
sented is  most  striking.  But  there  are  many  other  features  in 
the  city's  household  which  seem  worthy  of  commendation. 
Throughout  the  whole  .municipal  service  the  distinguishing 


SOCIAL  CUSTOMS  217 

traits  are  a  judicious  mingling  of  economy  and  liberality  in 
expenditure;  a  systematic  and  unceasing  vigilance  on  the  part 
of  the  city  for  its  entire  population,  in  all  those  things  properly 
coming  under  its  guidance,  and  a  cautious  progressiveness  which 
is  perhaps  the  most  astonishing  trait  of  all.  Faud,  jobbery, 
cliques  and  injurious  nepotism  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence, 
and  downright  stealing  or  other  forms  of  open  dishonesty  have 
not  been  heard  of  for  a  generation  or  more. 

But  this  characteristic  tidiness  in  German  cities  and  towns 
is  not  confined  to  the  above.  There  are  other  praiseworthy 
things  in  which  it  manifests  itself.  One  uf  them  is  the  uni- 
versal presence  of  flowers  and  prettily  kept  gardens  surrounding 
dwelling  houses.  Even  the  poor  and  humble  share  in  this. 
Nowhere  else  is  window-gardening  carried  on  to  the  same  ex- 
tent. Berlin  again  is  most  conspicuous  in  this  regard.  All  over 
the  city  you  see  blossoming  flowers  everywhere,  on  windows,  in 
gardens,  but  particularly  lining  the  many  thousands  of  balconies 
and  loggias  that  form  such  a  charming  feature  of  the  city.  Again, 
the  extensive  use  of  trees  lining  the  sides  of  streets  is  a  thing  in 
which  the  German  cities  of  to-day  excel.  These  afford  shade 
in  the  summer,  are  of  great  sanitary  value,  and  brighten  and 
beautify  what  would  otherwise  be  but  a  mighty  desert  of  stone 
walls.  The  tidiness  of  the  nation,  though,  shows  itself,  too,  in 
the  manner  everybody,  high  or  low,  is  clad.  Exquisite  taste  is  a 
gift  denied  to  the  German  race,  and  hence  you  will  not  see  in 
the  streets  of  German  cities  women  and  men  dressed  with  that 
elegance  and  chic  other  cities  like  Paris,  New  York  or  Vienna 
show.  But  you  will  see  something  even  better,  namely,  an  utter 
absence  of  raggedly,  slovenly  attired  persons.  The  poorest  even 
wear  clothes  that,  though  mended  perhaps,  are  clean  and  whole, 
and  the  mendicant  does  not  ply  his  vocation  except  his  face  be 
washed  and  his  hands  devoid  of  grime  and  dust. 

No  money  could  be  more  wisely  spent  by  the  common  councils 
of  a  score  of  our  leading  American  cities  than  to  provide  the 
means  for  a  number  of  municipal  experts  to  visit  German  repre- 
sentative cities,  make  a  close  study  of  the  secret  to  their  successful 
administration,  and  then  report  precisely  what  they  have  found, 
and  secure  the  widest  publicity  for  such  reports.  That  would 
go  a  great  ways  in  smoothing  the  way  for  municipal  reform  here. 


CHAPTER  XV 
GERMANY'S  COLONIES 

COLONIAL  aspirations  in  Germany  date  back  less  than  a  score 
of  years,  for  they  arose  in  the  middle  of  the  eighties,  after  some 
Hamburg  and  Bremen  merchants  of  enterprise  had  given  the 
determining  impetus  by  land  purchases  from  native  chiefs  and 
by  the  settlement  of  small  and  modest  trading-posts  on  the  west 
coast  of  Africa  and  in  the  Polynesian  archipelago.  Colonial 
enthusiasts  in  the  empire  point,  of  course,  to  the  historical  fact 
that  once  before,  on  January  i,  1683,  the  Great  Elector  of 
Brandenburg  hoisted  his  flag  over  a  portion  of  the  Guinea 
coast,  and  proclaimed  it  German  soil.  As  an  historical  incident 
this  is  of  interest,  for  it  proves  that  even  in  those  earlier  days 
it  was  a  Hohenzollern  who  was  far-sighted  enough — he  alone 
among  all  the  rulers  of  Germany — to  feel  the  need  and  impor- 
tance of  transmarine  possessions.  But  practically  this  first 
experiment  in  colonizing  proved  fruitless,  and  after  some  years 
the  fort  and  settlement  of  Gross- Friedrichsburg  in  that  torrid 
part  of  the  Dark  Continent  was  abandoned,  and  every  trace  of 
it  was  lost. 

Bismarck  and  old  Emperor  William  I  did  not  at  first  take 
kindly  to  the  idea  of  acquiring  German  colonies.  They  felt  that 
it  was  one  thing  to  get  and  another  thing  to  hold  them ;  one  thing 
to  own  fragments  of  stray  land  under  the  name  of  colonies,  and 
quite  another  to  make  self-supporting  and  profitable  property 
out  of  them.  They  were  afraid  of  British  jealousies,  and  of 
embroiling  the  relations  of  the  empire  for  the  sake  of  what  might 
prove  barren  and  even  costly  experiments.  Bismarck  at  that 
time  said  a  number  of  shrewd  things  in  a  pithy  way,  by  which  he 
meant  to  throw  cold  water  on  this  newly  awakened  colonial 
ardour.  In  the  Reichstag  and  in  conversation  he  strongly 
deprecated  the  notion,  pointing  out  the  almost  insuperable 
difficulties  standing  in  the  way  of  successful  colonization  for 


GERMANY'S    COLONIES  219 

Germany.  A  large  and  influential  portion  of  the  German  press 
sided  with  him  in  this.  Attention  was  called  to  the  fact  that  all 
the  parts  of  the  world  which  as  colonies  were  of  .value  had  already 
been  acquired  by  England,  France,  Spain,  or  Portugal,  and  that 
without  war  this  fact  could  not  be  shaken.  Also,  that  what 
Germany  needed  was  not  mere  trading-posts  flying  her  flag, 
not  mere  points  whence  her  commerce  could  radiate,  for  such  she 
already  had  in  abundance,  and  the  field  for  commercial  extension 
was  large  enough  for  even  her  ambition,  with  free-trading 
England  holding  the  most  valuable  colonial  tracts,  but  colonies 
that  could  afford  a  second  home  of  comfort  for  the  steadily 
increasing  surplus  of  her  teeming  population.  With  an  annual 
increase  in  population  of  nearly  a  million,  such  colonies  would, 
indeed,  prove  a  great  and  lasting  blessing  to  her,  and  would  be 
worth  all  the  financial  and  other  sacrifices  she  could  make.  But 
such  colonies,  unfortunately,  were  not  in  the  market,  and  there 
seemed  to  be  no  way  of  stopping  the  continuance  of  that  regular 
stream  of  German  emigration  to  the  United  States,  Canada  and 
Australia  which  the  keen  minds  of  Germany  are  all  the  while 
earnestly  deploring.  Emigration  from  the  empire  at  that  time 
was  still  very  large,  amounting  to  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  per 
annum.  Independent  of  the  colonial  movement,  it  has  since 
steadily  gone  down,  and  for  five  or  six  years  past  has  hardly 
exceeded  twenty  or  thirty  thousand. 

However,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighties  the  movement  had 
become  so  strong,  and  had  seized  hold  of  such  influential 
classes  of  the  population,  that  it  swept  away  all  objections.  It 
literally  carried  Bismarck  and  the  whole  government  off  their 
feet.  The  first  acquisitions  of  colonial  territory  were  made,  and 
since  then  Germany — excepting  during  the  brief  chancellorship  of 
Count  Caprivi,  who  opposed  colonies  and  was  not  afraid  to  say 
so — has  consistently  held  to  a  policy  of  colonial  aggrandizement, 
even  though  this  has  meant  the  annual  expenditure  of  large  sums, 
growing  yearly  larger,  without  any  adequate  returns. 

In  size  the  German  colonies  at  present  are  very  respectable, 
since  they — roughly  speaking — comprise  a  territory  about  five 
times  as  large  as  that  of  the  empire  itself.  To  the  vast  tracts  of 
land  in  tropical  and  semi-tropical  Africa  which  were  first  placed 
under  the  protection  of  her  flag  have  come  successively  other 


220  GERMANY 

territories  likewise  situated  in  far-away  and  torrid  zones.  Besides 
the  German  portion  of  New  Guinea  and  many  islands  in  that 
region,  she  acquired,  during  the  chancellorship  of  Count  Buelow 
the  small  Chinese  colony  of  Kiao-chau — intended  doubtless  as  the 
nucleus  of  other  and  more  extensive  ones — which  may  prove  in 
its  commercial  and  political  value  of  greatest  benefit  to  her;  next, 
the  larger  portion  of  Samoa,  consisting  of  the  two  islands  of 
Upolu  and  Savaii,  by  the  well-remembered  tripartite  agreement 
between  her  and  England  and  the  United  States;  and  lastly, 
shortly  after  the  close  of  the  Spanish- American  War,  by  purchase 
from  Spain,  the  Carolines  and  Marianes,  with  the  exception  of 
Guam. 

Still,  comparing  her  acquisitions,  even  territorially  considered, 
with  those  made  by  England  and  France  during  the  same  space 
of  time,  Germany  has  remained  far  behind,  especially  in  Africa. 
True,  she  has  not  met  with  a  Fashoda,  doubtless  in  consequence 
of  the  moderation  displayed  all  this  time.  But  she  had  to  see 
since  the  middle  of  the  eighties  enormous  stretches  of  far  more 
valuable  African  territory  "gobbled  up"  by  both  England  and 
France.  The  irony  of  fate  is  shown  distinctly  in  this,  for 
Germany  it  was  which  first,  through  Bismarck,  pointed  France 
the  way  to  a  new  colonial  empire.  Bismarck  in  his  writings  tells 
all  about  that.  He  intimated  to  the  then  French  ambassador  in 
Berlin,  and  to  Jules  Favre,  that  instead  of  "staring  in  a  hypno- 
tized way  at  that  gap  in  the  Vosges,"  left  by  German  conquest, 
they  had  better  acquire  beyond  the  seas  a  hundred  times  the  size 
of  that  strip  of  land,  and  that  Germany  would  not  stand  in  their 
way  in  such  a  laudable  ambition.  The  French  statesmen  took 
the  hint,  and  the  Tonquin  adventure,  closely  followed  by  a 
score  of  others,  was  the  consequence,  but  unfortunately  with- 
out thereby  inducing  France  to  cease  "staring  at  the  gap  in  the 
Vosges."  If  it  had  not  been  for  this  direct  encouragement  given 
by  Bismarck,  France,  it  is  safe  to  say,  would  not  have  embarked 
on  her  late  career  of  colonial  conquest,  and  neither  the  whole  vast 
territory  to  the  south  of  China  proper,  nor  that  immense  belt 
of  land  now  brought  under  French  sway  in  Africa,  would  have 
become  the  prey  of  the  adventurous  Gaul.  Germany  did  not 
divert,  as  Bismarck  intended  it,  France's  attention  from  her  lost 
provinces  and  from  her  dreams  of  revenge,  and  helped  her  lusty 


GERMANY'S    COLONIES  221 

neighbour  indirectly  to  immense  and  valuable  possessions  in  other 
parts  of  the  globe.  Perhaps,  however,  it  might  be  counted  a  gain 
in  the  Bismarckian  sense  that  France,  by  thus  assiduously  pur- 
suing a  colonial  policy  traced  for  her  by  the  Iron  Chancellor,  did 
become  the  inconvenient  rival  of  England,  and  by  meeting  in 
consequence,  at  a  certain  critical  point  in  this  career,  with  the 
Fashoda  reverse,  has  once  more  turned  the  bitter  foe  of  proud 
Albion.  That,  if  it  be  a  gain,  is,  however,  the  only  tangible  one 
that  has  accrued  to  Germany  in  the  wake  of  France's  new  colonial 
policy. 

But  while  by  no  means  as  large  as  either  England's  or  France's 
acquisitions  made  during  the  same  short  period,  in  point  of 
size  Germany  now  holds  a  goodly  colonial  empire.  In  point  of 
intrinsic  worth,  though,  that  cannot  be  maintained,  as  a  hasty 
survey  of  the  facts,  drawn  from  the  latest  official  sources,  will 
demonstrate. 

In  Africa  she  has  Togo,  a  territory  lying  on  the  Gulf  of  Guinea, 
about  one-sixth  the  size  of  Germany,  with  a  coast  of  only  fifty- 
two  kilometres  in  length.  The  climate  is  tropical  and  murderous. 
There  are  no  harbours  and  the  coast  is  flat  and  inaccessible. 
Part  of  the  interior  is  fertile,  but  in  the  absence  of  almost  any 
navigable  rivers — for  the  Mono,  Sio,  and  the  tributaries  of  the 
Volta  are  not  useful  that  way — and  of  all  other  means  of  com- 
munication, excepting  footpaths,  the  production  is  commercially 
not  very  available.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  only  things  of 
commercial  value  there  are  products  of  the  oil  palm.  The  negro 
population  belongs  to  the  Ewe  tribes,  and  is  indolent,  super- 
stitious, and  fetish-worshiping.  This  colony  costs  the  empire 
annually  some  2,500,000  marks,  which  is  likewise  the  total  value 
of  its  exports,  while  the  imports  figure  up  a  trifle  higher.  There 
are  but  135  whites  in  the  whole  colony,  127  of  them  being 
Germans.  The  colony  is  bounded  by  English  and  French 
territory.  In  the  127  Germans  are  included  the  civil  and 
military  officials.  The  native  population  has  never  been  ascer- 
tained as  to  size,  but  is  not  very  large. 

Cameroons,  or  Kamerun,  as  it  is  spelled  in  German,  is  a  more 
valuable  possession,  in  fact,  intrinsically  the  most  valuable  under 
the  German  flag.  It  is  located  between  4.40  and  2.21  degrees  north 
latitude,  likewise  on  the  Gulf  of  Guinea  and  has  a  coast  extcn- 


222  GERMANY 

sion  of  320  kilometres,  or  about  220  miles.  In  size  it  is  almost 
as  large  as  Germany.  The  population  numbers,  however,  only 
about  3,000,000  all  told.  It  consists  of  various  tribes  of  the 
great  Bantu  negro  family,  who  occupy  the  coast  regions,  and  of 
Soudan  negro  tribes  in  the  mountainous  and  plateau  districts  of 
the  interior.  Among  the  former  there  are  still  some  cannibal 
tribes,  and  all  of  them  are  fetish  worshipers  of  the  most 
degraded  type.  The  Soudan  tribes  are  warlike  and  difficult  to 
manage,  and  are  under  the  lead  of  a  Mohammedan  tribe,  the 
Fulbes.  Their  main  industry  is  slave  hunting  and  selling. 
The  colonial  troops  have  had  several  bloody  wars  with  the 
Fulbe.s.  A  dangerous  and  rebellious  chieftain  named  Tibat; 
was  finally  brought  to  submission  in  1899.  The  coast  tribes  are 
unused  to  labour  or  agriculture,  but  do  some  trading.  The  whole 
coast  belt  is  low,  swampy  and  very  unhealthy,  and  malaria  and 
dysentery  make  the  average  duration  of  a  white  man's  life  there 
very  short  indeed.  The  mortality  rate  among  the  officials  and 
planters  is,  despite  the  fact  that  they  never  stay  longer  than  a 
year  or  two  in  the  country  before  taking  long  leave  of  absence  at 
home,  simply  frightful.  The  interior  is  partly  volcanic  and 
throughout  mountainous,  up  to  an  altitude  of  13,000  feet,  and 
much  more  healthful.  It  is  the  coast  region,  however,  which 
is  alone  commercially  valuable.  Owing  to  various  causes  it  has 
so  far  only  been  partially  exploited  by  German  planters  and 
dealers,  but  it  produces  cocoa  of  excellent  quality,  fine  rubber, 
palm  oil  and  pits,  ivory,  kola  nuts,  etc.,  and  of  late  the  culture  of 
cotton  has  been  introduced  under  the  tuition  of  coloured  experts 
from  this  country.  The  labour  question  plays,  however,  a  great 
part  in  that  whole  region,  and  is  very  difficult  of  regulation. 
The  coast  belt  produces,  besides,  everything  typically  tropical 
for  local  consumption. 

One  additional  difficulty  of  Cameroons  is  the  scarcity  of  means 
of  communication,  the  waterways  being  almost  the  whole  year 
around  unsuitable  for  navigation.  However,  the  Benue,  the 
Rio  del  Rey,  and  the  Sannaga  can  be  utilized  to  some  extent. 
The  culture  of  the  commercially  very  valuable  ramie  fiber  plant 
has  also  been  lately  introduced  by  a  plantation  society,  and 
promises  well.  The  exports  amounted  last  year  to  over  6,000,000 
marks  in  value,  and  the  imports  to  about  12,000,000.  The 


GERMANY'S    COLONIES  223 

German  government  received  some  1,600,000  marks  in  duties, 
and  some  2,000,000  of  marks  had  to  be  contributed  from  home 
for  administrative  expenses;  of  this  the  maintenance  of  the 
colonial  troops — amounting  to  about  1,200  men,  largely  coloured 
—  swallowed  up  the  largest  part. 

The  main  drawback  to  Cameroons  is  its  coast  climate.  With- 
out that  it  would,  indeed,  be  a  most  valuable  possession,  for 
large  districts  in  it  are  extraordinarily  fertile,  and  the  abundance 
of  rain  permits  from  three  to  six  crops  per  year.  Cape 
Debundja  and  vicinity  shows  an  average  annual  humidity  of 
about  twenty-eight  feet,  being  one  of  the  highest  on  the  face 
of  the  earth.  The  European  inhabitants  of  this  colony  number 
nearly  600,  of  which  452  are  Germans,  the  rest  mostly  English. 

Some  thirteen  degrees  farther  south,  between  17.16  and  28.38 
latitude  north,  and  with  along  coast,  is  German  Southwest  Africa, 
in  size  almost  double  that  of  the  empire.  Its  northern  boundary 
is  partially  formed  by  the  Kunene  River,  and  its  southern  one  by 
the  Orange  River  and  Cape  Colony.  The  climate  is  much  more 
healthy  than  that  of  any  other  German  colony,  but  is  still  semi- 
tropical.  Germany  hopes  to  there  settle  in  the  course  of  time  a 
large  and  prosperous  number  of  German  agriculturists  and  cattle 
raisers.  The  colony  was  in  part  first  acquired  from  native  chiefs 
by  the  Bremen  merchant,  Luderitz.  Portuguese  territory  is  to 
the  north  of  this  colony,  and  England  owns  the  so-called  Walfish 
Bay,  which  is  the  most  valuable  harbour.  Swakopmund  is  the 
only  German  port  there  at  all  practicable.  The  main  trouble 
with  this  colony  is  its  dearth  and  the  unproductive  soil,  which 
requires  abundant  artificial  irrigation.  The  population,  whose 
size  is  not  known,  is  also  a  hindrance,  being  partly  hostile,  and 
the  rest  indolent  and  unprogressive.  It  is  Hottentot  in  the 
south,  and  Herrero  and  Namaqua  in  the  north.  There  are 
copper  mines  of  value,  and  it  is  suspected  that  both  gold  and 
diamond  bearing  land  is  within  the  borders  of  the  colony,  but 
the  prospecting  done  so  far  has  failed  to  locate  it.  Graphite 
and  silver  ore  have  been  found  in  some  quantity.  Part  of  the 
interior  is  very  mountainous,  the  Omatako  being  some  8,500 
feet  high. 

The  only  export  article  of  value  so  far  traded  in  is  guano,  of 
which  over  a  million  marks'  worth  left  the  colony  last  year.  The 


224  GERMANY 

empire  only  received  about  1,000,000  marks'  worth  in  duties, 
etc.,  and  had  to  make  up  a  deficit  of  over  9,000,000  by  Reichstag 
appropriation.  In  fact,  this  colony,  next  to  German  East  Africa, 
has  so  far  proved  the  worst  "elephant"  of  all,  requiring  every 
year  large  appropriations,  and  yielding  little.  The  colonial  troops 
kept  there  are  German,  and  number  nearly  1,000  all  told.  In  all 
there  are  some  3,388  whites  residing  in  the  colony,  of  whom 
over  2,000  are  Germans. 

On  the  eastern  coast  of  Africa,  opposite  Zanzibar,  and  between 
4.40  and  10.41  latitude  north,  stretches  another  vast  territory 
owned  by  Germany,  viz.,  German  East  Africa,  bounded  on  the 
north  by  English,  on  the  South  by  Portuguese,  and  on  the  west 
by  Congo  State  territory.  Its  population  counts  about  4,000,000, 
and  in  size  the  colony  is  almost  twice  that  of  Germany.  The 
coast  line  is  also  unfavourable,  being  low  and  accessible  for  ships 
at  only  a  few  points,  the  principal  harbour  being  Dar-es-Salam, 
with  Tanga,  Lindi,  and  Mikindani  as  of  secondary  importance. 
While  the  coast  is  low  and  malarial,  and  tropical  fevers  are  there 
endemic,  the  interior  is  partly  a  high,  and  barren  plateau  and 
partly  crossed  by  high  chains  of  mountains.  This  colony  can 
hardly  ever  pay  in  the  commercial  or  any  other  sense,  for  both 
soil  and  climate  seem  to  preclude  such  a  possibility.  The  interior 
has,  it  is  true,  large  districts  which  are,  owing  to  their  high  eleva- 
tion, healthy  and  suitable  enough  in  that  respect  for  habitation 
by  the  white  man,  but  the  soil  is  sterile,  and  the  rainfall  is  fre- 
quently so  insufficient  as  to  produce  famine.  The  grasshopper 
plague  is  also  one  of  the  features  of  the  country,  and  the 
rinderpest  and  other  cattle  diseases  prove  ruinous.  Since  German 
occupation  began,  there  have  been  several  famines  of  so  severe 
a  nature  that  whole  tribes  starved  to  death,  and  the  total 
mortality  from  this  source  alone  has  been  frightful.  In  the 
interior  rises,  from  amidst  a  group  of  almost  inaccessible 
mountains,  the  giant  of  Africa,  the  Kilimandjaro,  about  20,000 
feet  high,  and  to  the  extreme  west  are  the  lakes  Victoria, 
Tanganyika,  and  Nyassa,  spread  in  direction  from  north  to 
south.  The  trade  of  these  lakes,  however,  has  of  late  been 
largely  diverted  to  English  or  Congo  territory. 

The  population  is  mainly  Bantu  negro,  with  warlike  Massai  in 
the  north  and  Zulus  in  the  south,  and  the  mixed  race  of  Suaheli, 


GERMANY'S   COLONIES  225 

which  is  largely  of  Arab  blood,  along  the  coast.  The  latter 
is  by  far  the  most  civilized,  and  its  dialect  forms  the  lingua  franca 
in  the  whole  of  East  Africa.  There  has  been  an  almost  unceas- 
ing warfare  carried  on  in  this  colony  since  Germany  acquired  it, 
either  with  tribes  in  the  interior  or  with  the  dominant  Arab 
element  on  the  coast,  and  conditions  are  by  no  means  settled  as 
yet.  This  colony,  in  fact,  has  been  the  most  expensive  and 
relatively  the  most  unprofitable.  But  for  some  inscrutable 
reason  it  is  precisely  the  one  on  which  the  colonial  enthusiasts 
and  the  Central  Government  in  Berlin  have  wasted  their  great- 
est efforts.  Count  Goetzen,  formerly  German  military  attache" 
in  Washington,  and  his  American  wife,  the  former  Baltimore 
belle,  Mrs.  Lay,  do  at  present  the  honours  in  the  gubernatorial 
palace  in  Dar-es-Salam,  and  there  is  more  military  splendour, 
more  red  tape,  and  more  imported  Prussian-bureaucracy  in  this 
colony  than  in  all  others  combined.  But  that  does  not  alter 
the  facts  as  to  the  unfavourable  climatic  and  geologic  conditions. 
Nearly  everything  that  has  been  tried  in  German  East  Africa 
has  proved  a  financial  failure.  It  has  been  so  with  sugar,  with 
indigo,  and  especially  with  coffee  and  tobacco.  The  rivers  of  the 
colony,  the  Pangani,  Wami,  Rufidji,  Rovuma,  are  not  navigable. 
There  are  hardly  any  roads  besides  the  caravan  roads.  The 
native  interior  population  is  miserably  poor  and  unprogressive, 
and  the  railroads  now  building  and  projected  will,  under  the  most 
favourable  circumstances,  not  pay  for  generations,  if  they  ever 
will.  The  trade  has  greatly  decreased  since  German  occupation, 
and  the  imports  from  and  exports  to  Germany  likewise.  The 
total  exports  now  amount  to  barely  3,000,000  marks,  and  consist 
in  the  main  of  ivory  (brought  by  caravans  from  the  interior), 
rubber,  copra,  copal,  sesame,  and  other  raw  products.  The 
imports  amounted  to  some  10,000,000  marks,  but  consisted 
one-half  in  foodstuffs  and  articles  of  every  kind  for  the  white 
population,  especially  the  numerous  civil  and  military  officials. 
The  empire  has  to  make  good  an  annual  deficit  varying  between 
six  and  ten  millions.  Out  of  these  sums  the  colonial  troops, 
numbering  about  2,500  men,  are  paid. 

That  cluster  of  colonies  termed  administratively  New  Guinea, 
and  comprising  the  German  portion  of  the  large  island  of  New 
Guinea,  the  so-called  Bismarck  Archipelago,  and  the  Carolines 


226  GERMANY 

and  Marianes,  is  together  about  half  the  size  of  Germany.  The 
New  Guinea  part  of  it  is  by  far  the  most  valuable,  though  that 
does  not  mean  a  great  deal,  inasmuch  as  the  whole  trade  amounts 
annually  only  to  a  couple  of  million  marks,  counting  both 
imports  and  exports.  The  islands  variously  sjtyled  Salomons  Isles, 
or  Bismarck  Archipelago,  are  inhabited  by  cannibals  for  the 
larger  part.  The  Carolines  and  Marianes  may  in  course  of  time 
amount  to  something  in  the  commercial  way,  but  so  far  they  do 
not.  There  are  almost  as  many  missionaries  as  natives  living 
there,  remnants  of  the  Spanish  regime.  The  Marshall  Islands 
are  also  commercially  very  insignificant.  The  same  remark 
applies  to  Samoa,  although  Germany  is  now  making  strenuous 
efforts  to  improve  matters  there.  The  total  exports  from  the 
German  part  of  Samoa  was  last  year  but  1,500,000  marks,  and 
the  imports  a  trifle  over  2,000,000.  The  empire's  contribu- 
tion to  balance  Samoa's  exchequer  was  for  the  same  period 
146,000  marks,  and  the  revenues  fell  even  short  of  that  small 
amount. 

It  is  expected  that  Kiao-chau,  Germany's  small  slice  of  China, 
taken  by  force  in  1898,  will  some  day  be  commercially  the  most 
important  of  her  transoceanic  possessions.  The  intention  is 
to  make  of  it  a  second  Hongkong.  It  has  one  of  China's  most 
populous,  fertile,  and  salubrious  provinces,  Shantung,  for 
Hinterland,  and  Germany  is  grudging  neither  money  nor  men  to 
make  something  of  the  new  colony,  of  its  free  harbour,  Tsingtao, 
and  of  the  extremely  valuable  mines,  which  are  at  an  accessible 
distance  behind  it.  During  the  four  years  of  German  occupa- 
tion the  Reichstag  has  granted  altogether  some  $10,000,000  for 
the  improvement  of  this  colony,  which  is,  territorially  consid- 
ered, the  smallest  of  all,  comprising  but  100  square  kilometres, 
and  that  body  has  appropriated  another  13,000,000  of  marks  for 
the  current  year.  The  harbour  there  has  been  deepened  and 
made  accessible  during  winter  as  well.  Docks  and  wharves  are 
being  built,  large  warehouses  are  being  constructed,  and  besides 
government  enterprise  there  is  also  quite  a  deal  of  private 
German  enterprise  shown  there.  The  civil  and  military  adminis- 
tration has  been  consolidated  and  perfected  on  German  models, 
and  the  military  and  naval  safety  of  the  place  has  been  vouch- 
safed by  a  garrison  numbering  2,352  men,  and  by  strong 


GERMANY'S    COLONIES  22y 

defenses  in  the  harbor  and  its  approaches,  as  well  as  by 
fortifications  on  the  land  side. 

In  fine,  the  preliminaries  are  all  being  properly  attended  to 
by  Germany,  to  make  something  worth  while  of  Kiao-chau,  but 
the  future  alone  will  tell  whether  the  hopes  entertained  will  ever 
be  fulfilled.  Meanwhile  the  trade  of  Kiao-chau  is  as  yet  ridicu- 
lously small,  amounting  to  something  like  $25,000  only — always 
excepting,  of  course,  the  imports  for  the  above  purposes  from 
Germany  and  elsewhere.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that  Germany 
has  every  reason  to  expect  a  great  influx  of  trade  to  Kiao-chau 
within  a  relatively  brief  period.  The  coal  fields  of  Shantung 
which  are  now  being  reached  by  the  new  German  railroad, 
from  Tsingtao  will  alone  bring  a  great  deal  of  shipping  to  her 
harbour,  as  this  coal  is  unequaled  in  quality  on  the  whole  eastern 
coast  of  Asia.  The  iron  ores  from  mines  within  a  radius  of  fifty 
miles  of  Kiao-chau  are  also  said  to  be  of  exceptional  richness. 
The  agreement  made  between  China  and  Germany  after  the 
seizure  of  Kiao-chau  virtually  granted  Germany  the  sole  right 
of  exploitation  for  Shantung,  and  although  this  paragraph  has 
been  strongly  demurred  to  by  the  United  States,  England,  and 
Japan,  the  probability  is  that,  practically  at  least,  Germany  will 
be  able  to  do  pretty  much  as  she  likes  in  "milking"  Shantung 
and  all  there  is  to  be  gotten  out  of  that  province  of  20,000,000 
population  Russia  and  France  understand,  and  acquiesce  in, 
that  this  is  Germany's  "sphere  of  influence"  in  China. 

Summarizing,  then,  this  brief  survey  of  Germany's  present 
colonies,  it  is  quite  evident  that  they  are,  looking  at  them  in  the 
present  light  or  that  of  the  future,  a  rather  poor  bargain  for 
so  much  money,  men  and  energy  expended — with  the  possible 
exception  of  Kiao-chau.  There  are  several  conclusions  that  may 
be  safely  drawn  regarding  them.  Not  one  of  them  is  suitable  for 
the  German  settler  and  emigrant,  at  least  not  in  large  numbers. 
German  Southwest  Africa  is  the  only  larger  colony  whose  climate 
is  nearly  moderate  and  adaptable  to  the  German  physical  make- 
up, but  there  the  poverty  of  the  soil  seems  to  forbid  fructification 
of  that  advantage.  The  German  government  advises  only  such 
farmers  or  cattle  growers  to  emigrate  to  that  colony  who  have 
to  invest  there  a  ready  capital  of  at  least  $3,000.  So  that  it  is 
quite  certain  that  the  colonies  which  Germany  has  been  thus  far 


228  GERMANY 

able  to  acquire  do  not  solve  the  main  problem — i.  e.,  how  to  dis- 
pose of  Germany's  surplus  population  in  a  manner  best  serving 
the  nation's  political,  racial  and  commercial  advantages.  That 
problem  to-day  is,  in  fact,  as  far  from  its  solution  as  ever.  There 
is,  to  be  sure,  a  general  readiness,  or  plan,  to  acquire  other  and, 
for  the  above  purpose,  more  suitable  colonies  in  some  way  and  at 
some  time,  no  matter  from  whom.  Germany  is  in  the  market 
for  this  end.  She  would  like  nothing  better  than  to  become 
Portugal's  or  France's  colonial  heir.  There  is,  it  may  be  recalled, 
some  sort  of  understanding  between  England  and  Germany 
on  the  one  side,  and  Portugal  on  the  other.  The  purport  of 
this  agreement  is,  roughly  speaking,  that  Portugal  has  given 
these  two  powers,  to  both  of  whom  she  is  under  heavy  financial 
obligations,  first  option  rights  in  purchasing  any  or  all  of  her 
colonies,  whenever  she  should  get  in  such  serious  straits  as  to  be 
forced  to  sacrifice  her  national  pride  to  her  national  honour  and 
independence.  Portugal  has  still,  as  the  map  shows,  some 
pretty  good  tidbits  for  a  connoisseur  in  colonies — Goa  in  the 
Indies,  Macao  in  China,  the  Azores  and  Cape  Verdes,  and  im- 
mense and  in  part  very  valuable  possessions  in  Africa.  Some 
day  there  will  be  a  dividing  up  of  all  this  crude  wealth  between 
England  and  Germany,  England  getting  the  lion's  share.  That 
much  is  reasonably  certain.  A  good  deal  of  these  Portuguese 
possessions  in  Africa  border  on  German  territory,  and  hence 
will  greatly  enhance  the  value  of  the  latter.  With  Spain,  too, 
Germany  has  a  sort  of  understanding — as  the  result  of  lengthy 
negotiations — regarding  the  Island  of  Fernando  Po,  situated 
opposite  the  Cameroons  colony. 

But  all  this,  and  the  other  schemes  and  half-formed  plans 
of  Germany  as  to  additional  colonial  acquisitions,  lie  veiled  in 
the  future.  Just  now  her  colonial  possessions  are  practically 
worthless,  worse  than  worthless,  for  they  cost  her  a  great  deal, 
and  she  will  probably  never  get  out  of  them  again  what  is  being 
put  into  them  one  way  and  another. 

Besides,  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  Germany  has  shown  a 
lucky  hand  in  her  colonizing  endeavours.  Without  really  intend- 
ing to  do  so,  merely  following  the  natural  bent  of  her  political 
and  social  mind,  she  has  taken  pattern  much  more  largely  from 
those  unfortunate  French  colonizing  methods  than  from  the 


GERMANY'S    COLONIES  229 

only  successful  ones  that  modern  history  tells  us  about,  viz.,  the 
English  ones.  Bismarck  from  the  start  warned  against  that.  He 
always  maintained  that  the  English  way — letting  the  merchant 
and  planter,  settler  and  prospector,  show  the  way,  lay  ths 
practical  foundation,  create  trade  and  vested  interests,  and  have 
the  flag  then  follow  them,  in  a  modest  and  inexpensive  manner — 
was  the  one  for  Germany  to  imitate.  But  the  spirit  of  the  nation 
tended  in  another  direction.  It  tended  to  at  once  set  about 
creating  an  expensive,  cumbersome  and  useless  but  well- 
organized  and  perfectly  graded  government  apparatus,  scaled 
and  working  very  much  as  at  home  in  Germany — a  duplication  of 
the  bureaucratism  and  militarism  left  behind,  in  fact.  Germans 
are  used  to  this,  just  as  Englishmen  are  unused  to  it.  And  so 
the  central  authorities  in  Berlin  unconsciously,  almost  instinc- 
tively, copied  the  French  method  of  organizing  and  managing 
colonies — a  method  which  has  always  failed  in  the  long  run. 
Thus  you  see  in  every  German  colony  to-day,  even  in  the  smallest 
and  most  unimportant,  a  whole  administrative  machinery, 
colonial  troops  and  police  to  preserve  public  and  private  peace, 
judges,  governors,  and  so  forth,  and  the  rough  and  ready  settler, 
instead  of  being  left  to  fight  out  his  battles  alone  and  thus 
become  what  he  couldn't  be  at  home — a  man  of  sturdy  inde- 
pendence, strong  will,  and  indomitable  courage,  the  man  able 
to  cope  with  the  new  situation — has  to  ask  the  permission  of  these 
colonial  authorities  at  every  step,  and  thus  remains  in  leading- 
strings.  Germany  has  yet  to  prove  that  she  can  successfully 
organize,  manage  and  foster  colonies.  The  spirit  of  her  home 
institutions,  of  the  nation,  seems  to  forbid  it.  There  are  many 
in  Germany  who  see  and  feel  this.  In  the  Reichstag  the  leaders 
of  the  Left  have  often  pointed  it  out.  One  of  the  most  original 
and  ablest  of  her  colonial  politicians  and  writers,  Gustav  Meinecke, 
in  a  series  of  powerfully  written  pamphlets  demonstrated 
it.  The  term  of  "assessorism,"  meant  to  convey  the  above  idea, 
was  coined  and  is  in  a  portion  of  the  press  invoked  against  it. 
But  the  prevailing  system  will  probably  remain  in  force,  simply 
because  it  is  in  conformity  with  the  present  status  of  the 
German  political  and  social  conditions. 

But  whether  or  no,  the  colonial  fever  is  still  in  the  German 
blood,  and  with  millions  of  Germans  it  is  a  fad  to  which  they  are 


230  GERMANY 

willing  to  sacrifice  something,  irrespective  of  the  tangible,  the 
commercial  value  therewith  connected.  As  witness,  for  instance, 
the  German  Colonial  Society.  Its  membership  rises  into  the 
hundreds  of  thousands,  and  branches  exist  in  almost  every 
German  town  and  village.  Its  presiding  officers  include  an 
uncle  of  the  Empress,  also  Duke  John  Albert  of  Mecklenburg, 
and  a  score  of  the  highest  men  in  the  empire.  The  object  of  the 
society  is  to  further  colonial  interests.  There  are  dozens  of 
other  organizations  which  nominally  exist  for  the  exploitation 
of  some  colony  or  other,  or  to  conduct  a  plantation  on  com- 
mercial lines,  but  which  are  really  gotten  up  and  run  just  for  the 
purpose  of  affording  the  members  a  chance  to  vent  their  patriot- 
ism, nobody  expecting  any  returns  on  the  sums  invested,  and 
each  concern  managed  in  a  most  unbusinesslike  manner.  Many 
millions  of  capital  are  thus  frittered  away  which  yield  no  returns, 
or  only  very  inadequate  ones.  This,  as  above  stated,  is  a  fad,  a 
popular  craze,  and  probably  some  years  hence  sober  sense  will 
reassert  itself.  For  one  thing,  though,  the  large  capitalists  in 
Germany  do  not  go  into  these  colonial  mercantile  ventures. 
They  continue  to  treat  business  and  patriotism  as  separate 
things. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

GERMAN    COURTS 

WHEN  compared  with  the  days  of  old,  court  life  in  Germany, 
as  elsewhere,  has  been  stripped  of  much  of  its  imposing  features. 
The  day  is  past  when  it  was  one  continuous  round  of  pleasures 
and  dissipations.  The  gay  court  of  Napoleon  III  at  Compienge 
and  the  Tuileries  finds  no  duplicate  in  the  Germany  of  to-day. 
Nor  is  there  any  such  ruler  there  like  Jerome,  the  whilom  king 
of  Westphalia,  whose  motto  on  bidding  his  guests  leave  at  night 
was,  in  his  broken  German,  "Morken  widder  lustick"  (to-morrow 
there  will  be  lots  of  fun  again).  The  glories  and  splendours  of 
the  Dresden  court,  once  rivaling  those  of  Versailles,  are  now 
cut  down  to  very  modest  dimensions.  And  in  the  majority  of 
the  smaller  courts  life  has  become  insufferably  dull. 

Of  course,  this  decline  of  magnificence  and  this  utter  lack  of 
spendthrift  methods  is  not  alone  attributable  to  a  more  serious 
turn  of  mind  that  has  taken  possession  of  the  sovereigns,  though 
there  is  no  denying  the  fact  that  a  great  sobering  process  has  been 
going  on  among  them  for  several  generations.  It  is  more  largely 
due  to  the  political  awakening  of  the  peoples  ruled  over,  and  to 
the  much  slenderer  incomes  of  the  rulers.  In  the  eighteenth 
century,  whenever  a  petty  German  tyrant  found  an  ebb  in  his 
treasury,  he  simply  sold  so  many  thousands  of  his  faithful  sub- 
jects to  the  highest  bidder,  which  usually  meant  England,  and 
then  he  had  once  more  the  wherewithal  to  give  splendid  fetes,  to 
pay  the  excessive  salaries  of  his  French  and  Italian  ballet  dancers, 
and  to  build  another  fairy  palace  or  two  for  the  latest  favourite 
It  was  in  that  way,  as  the  youthful  Schiller  so  dramatically 
showed  in  his  "Cabale  und  Liebe,"  that  millions  upon  millions 
were  annually  wasted  at  the  courts  of  small  duchies  and  princi- 
palities, whose  legitimate  public  revenues  did  not  run  into  such 
figures  within  a  score  of  years.  In  those  days  and  until  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  rulers  were,  indeed,  potentates,  for 

231 


232  GERMANY 

they  could  do  as  they  pleased,  and  there  was  no  Reichstag,  no 
State  legislative  chambers,  to  say  them  nay. 

But  those  days  are  irrevocably  gone.  Even  in  Germany, 
intensely  monarchic  as  they  are,  the  people  have  become  chary  of 
their  substance,  and  will  not  permit  their  dear  rulers  to  squander 
it.  The  sovereigns  of  Germany  are  now  limited  in  their 
expenditures  to  those  constitutionally  fixed  appropriations  and 
revenues  which  their  subjects  saw  fit  to  leave  them,  and  to  the 
income  from  their  private  fortunes,  which  in  many  cases  are  very 
considerable.  Indeed,  there  are  several  ruling  sovereigns  in 
Germany  who  scorn  voted  appropriations  and  "appanages,"  an<? 
prefer  to  pay  their  own  way  altogether  out  of  their  own  pockets. 
The  grand  duke  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  is  one  of  these.  The 
larger  half  of  the  king  of  Saxony's  income  is  derived  from  his 
private  fortune.  In  Mecklenburg-Strelitz,  too,  the  ruling  grand 
duke  is  not  voted  any  sum  from  the  public  revenues,  nor  do  the 
rulers  of  Saxe-Altenburg,  of  Anhalt,  of  the  two  Reuss  princi- 
palities, and  of  Schaumburg-Lippe  receive  any  annual  remunera- 
tion out  of  public  funds,  excepting  such  as  accrue  to  them  from 
certain  domanial  estates.  It  results  from  this,  as  may  be  inci- 
dentally mentioned,  that  a  number  of  these  petty  German  rulers 
are  Agrarians;  nay,  for  that  matter,  all  of  them  are,  for  the 
income  from  their  crown  lands,  domanial  estates,  forests,  dairies, 
etc.,  plays  a  large  r61e  in  the  annual  revenues  of  every  one  of  them. 
And  since  American  competition  has  greatly  cut  down  the  prices 
their  tenants  and  farmers  are  able  to  obtain  for  every  sort  of 
agricultural  product,  the  revenues  of  their  august  employers 
have  shrunk  correspondingly.  As  an  irreverent  American  once 
tersely  put  it :  The  king  business  no  longer  pays. 

Nevertheless,  there  are  still  numberless  persons  who  look 
upon  courts  as  the  earthly  equivalent  for  paradise,  and  upon 
the  privilege  of  attending  a  court  as  the  acme  of  bliss.  And  all 
these  persons  do  not  dwell  in  Germany,  either.  Some  of  them 
live  in  republics. 

The  Berlin  court,  as  the  largest  and  most  important,  may  be 
mentioned  first.  Under  this  present  Kaiser  it  has  become  much 
more  magnificent  and  gay  than  it  was  during  the  reign  of  his 
grandfather.  The  latter  made  it  a  practice  to  always  save  a 
considerable  portion  of  his  revenues,  and  to  put  them  by  for  a 


GERMAN   COURTS  233 

rainy  day,  and  for  his  progeny  as  well.  Thus  it  was  that  his 
grandson  on  ascending  the  throne  discovered  quite  a  nest-egg, 
rumour  said  60,000,000  marks.  This  went  partially  to  his  brother, 
Henry,  but  the  Kaiser's  own  share  has  helped  him  greatly  to 
tide  over  temporary  stringencies  in  his  particular  money  market. 
As  king  of  Prussia  the  Kaiser  receives  an  annual  revenue  of 
15,719,296  marks,  or  nearly  $4,000,000,  which  sum  is  regularly 
appropriated  by  the  Prussian  Diet.  His  income  from  his  do- 
manial and  private  estates,  mines,  forests,  lakes,  etc.,  has  shrunk 
greatly  during  the  past  ten  years,  but  it  still  amounts  to  another 
million  and  a  half.  As  Kaiser,  the  Reichstag  merely  votes  him 
annually  a  sum  "for  representative  purposes,"  as  the  phrase  goes, 
and  he  is  expected  to  defray  out  of  that  a  number  of  expenses 
which  naturally  devolve  on  the  imperial  crown,  including  prizes  to 
artists  or  literary  men,  gifts  to  charitable  institutions  or  pensions 
to  individuals,  and  other  matters. 

As  head  of  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty  the  Kaiser  has  to  take 
care  in  a  suitable  manner  of  all  the  members  of  the  royal  house- 
hold, so  far  as  there  is  need  of  it.  There  are,  however,  as  it 
happens,  but  one  or  two  distant  relatives  of  his  who  claim  a 
share  of  his  revenues,  while  all  the  others  are  very  well  pro- 
vided with  this  world's  goods,  and  one  of  them,  Prince  Frederick 
Leopold,  who  is  married  to  a  younger  sister  of  the  Empress, 
has  a  much  larger  independent  fortune  of  his  own  than  that 
of  the  Kaiser's  family.  His  uncle,  too,  Prince  Albrecht,  the 
Regent  of  Brunswick,  is  very  wealthy. 

The  imperial  court  is  usually  held  either  in  Berlin  or  in 
Potsdam.  In  Berlin  it  is  the  ancient  Castle,  or  Schloss,  situated 
in  the  centre  of  the  oldest  portion  of  the  city,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Spree,  where  the  imperial  family  resides  during  its  regular 
stay  in  town,  which  lasts  as  a  rule  from  shortly  after  New  Year's 
until  the  middle  of  April  or  May,  according  to  the  early  or  later 
arrival  of  spring  weather.  During  these  three  months,  then,  the 
large  court  festivities  take  place.  The  Berlin  Schloss  consists 
of  three  main  portions,  the  oldest  and  most  picturesque 
dating  back  some  500  years,  and  being  now  exclusively  used  as 
residential  quarters  for  court  officials,  superannuated  chamber- 
lains, ladies-in-waiting,  etc.;  its  rooms  are  small  and  devoid  of 
modern  comforts.  The  central  and  the  northern  portions  are 


234"  GERMANY 

architecturally  much  more  pretentious;  they  enclose  spacious 
courts,  and  the  total  number  of  rooms  in  them  runs  up  to  nearly 
600.  However,  only  about  fifty  of  them  are  large  enough  for 
big  assemblages,  It  is  in  these  that  the  court  festivities  are 
held,  and  a  number  of  them,  such  as  the  White  Hall,  the  Black 
Eagle  Hall,  the  Red  Eagle  Hall,  the  Order  Hall,  the  Branden- 
burg Chambers,  are  indeed  very  fine,  and  contain  not  only  a 
wealth  of  objets  de  vertu,  noble  paintings,  carved  and  heavily 
gilt  furniture,  costly  gobelins  and  other  precious  hangings, 
but  show  likewise  artistic  decorations  on  walls  and  ceilings. 
However,  intrinsically  the  interior  of  the  so-called  Stadtschloss 
in  Potsdam  is  more  valuable,  where  there  is  an  enormous  amount 
of  solid  silver  used  in  the  decorations. 

During  the  short  court  season  in  Berlin  are  given  about  ten 
large  and  as  many  smaller  fetes,  consisting  of  several  big  court 
balls,  at  which  the  attendance  usually  reaches  two  or  three  thou- 
sand ;  the  more  exclusive  balls  given  for  the  more  intimate  circle 
of  the  imperial  court,  where  the  number  in  most  cases  does  not 
exceed  three  or  four  hundred;  the  regular  round  of  banquets,  and 
possibly  several  special  ones  in  honour  of  distinguished  guests ; 
the  series  of  court  receptions,  and  the  court  concerts  and 
masquerades  just  before  the  beginning  of  the  Lenten  season. 
During  Lent  itself  noisy  and  particularly  frivolous  gayeties  are 
not  indulged  in.  This  programme  not  infrequently  suffers 
considerable  curtailment,  in  case  the  death  of  near  relatives 
of  the  imperial  house  or  of  leading  members  of  allied  or  friendly 
dynasties  has  necessitated  court  mourning,  lasting  in  some 
instances  for  six  weeks  or  several  months. 

The  court  festivities  are  always  solemnly  announced  in  the 
official  press,  with  all  their  attendant  details,  such  as  the  hours 
and  days,  the  separate  entrances  to  be  used  by  every  class  of  the 
invited  guests,  the  costumes  to  be  worn,  the  preliminary  visits  to 
be  paid  by  the  ladies  to  the  first  lady-in-waiting  of  the  Empress, 
and  by  the  men  to  the  chief  chamberlain  and  chief  master 
of  ceremonies;  and  so  forth.  They  open  with  the  first  "Defilir- 
Cour,"  or  ceremonious  reception,  at  which  all  persons  entitled  to 
presentation  at  court  make  their  first  obeisance  to  majesty. 
Those  entitled  to  admittance  at  court,  by  reason  of  birth  or 
official  station,  are  the  members  of  the  royal  household ;  members 


GERMAN    COURTS  255 

of  other  German  dynasties  present  in  Berlin;  members  of  the 
aristocracy ;  all  officers  of  the  army  and  navy ;  all  members  of  the 
Prussian  and  of  the  imperial  cabinets;  all  persons  on  whom  a 
high  decoration  has  been  conferred ;  court  and  higher  government 
officials;  members  of  the  Prussian  Diet,  of  the  Bundesrath,  and 
of  the  Reichstag.  All  these  persons  are  termed  "courfahig," 
or  entitled  to  appearance  at  court.  As  the  members  of  the 
Reichstag,  too,  are  so  entitled,  the  sixty  members  belonging  to 
the  Socialist  Faction  there  might  also  go;  but  not  one  of  them 
has  ever  tried  it. 

At  the  initial  receptions,  of  course,  the  debutantes  of  the 
season  are  also  presented,  usually  by  their  mothers.  Much 
expensive  finery  is  displayed  on  these  occasions,  and  some  youth- 
ful charms  as  well.  However,  it  may  be  truthfully  said  that 
there  is  more  beauty,  more  elegance,  and  a  finer  array  of  glitter- 
ing gems  seen  at  many  a  ball  in  the  upper  circles  of  society  in 
republican  America  than  at  any  of  these  court  festivities  in 
imperial  Germany.  For  the  men,  of  course,  the  choice  in 
costume  is  narrowly  circumscribed  by  court  etiquette.  There 
is  a  certain  cut  and  material,  a  certain  sword  and  shoe  buckle, 
prescribed  for  each  category  of  male  guests,  and  they  may  not 
transcend  these  limits.  They  must,  of  course,  wear  smalls  and 
silk  stockings,  all  their  German  or  Prussian  decorations,  and 
their  coats  (style  Louis  XVI)  must  have  a  certain  hue  and  show 
a  certain  amount  and  manner  of  embroidery,  either  in  gold  or 
silver.  Most  of  them  look  extremely  foolish  in  this  antiquated 
and  unbecoming  gear.  With  the  ladies,  of  course,  it  is  different. 
Except  when  obtaining  special  indulgence  from  the  Empress 
on  account  of  bodily  infirmity  or  old  age,  they  must  be  in  low- 
cut  corsage,  and  their  train  must  neither  be  below  nor  above 
a  certain  length.  But  otherwise  they  can  indulge  their  fancy, 
and  the  result  is  by  no  means  always  pleasing.  Court  dresses 
come  high,  and  from  $800  up  to  $2,000  is  often  expended  on 
such  a  costume  in  the  first  place.  But  such  dresses  generally 
do  duty  in  Germany  for  several  generations,  and  are  bequeathed 
as  heirlooms  by  mothers  and  maiden  aunts.  Then  the  material 
is  turned  perhaps  for  the  sixth  time,  and  the  cut  altered  to  fit 
new  fashions  and  new  physical  proportions.  With  many  of 
these  ladies  such  economy  is  absolutely  necessary,  for  the  large 


236  GERMANY 

majority  of  them  are  by  no  means  possessed  of  great  wealth.  Thus 
the  total  effect  of  such  a  court  representation  is  not  overpower- 
ing, and  there  is  even  a  tinge  of  shabbiness  perceptible  now  and 
then. 

At  the  smaller  court  affairs  it  is  different,  for  they  are  exclu- 
sively attended  by  men  and  women  of  high  social  position  and  of 
means.  The  diplomatic  fetes  are  a  matter  per  se.  Once  every 
year  the  Kaiser  gives  a  fine  banquet  exclusively  to  the  heads 
of  embassies  and  legations,  and  another  one  to  the  military 
and  naval  attaches,  and  they  are  also  invited  to  several  of  the 
large  balls  and  receptions,  but  only  in  exceptional  cases  to  the 
smaller  and  more  enjoyable  functions.  On  state  occasions, 
such  as  the  visit  of  honoured  guests,  allied  monarchs,  etc.,  there 
are  given  gala  performances  at  the  Royal  Opera  and  at  the 
Royal  Theatre,  when  much  floral  decoration  and  other  luxury 
is  indulged  in,  and  special  banquets,  etc.,  when  the  best  wines 
and  the  choicest  gold  plate  are  produced.  On  the  occasion  of 
the  visit  of  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  of  Austria,  eighteen 
months  ago,  to  help  celebrate  the  coming  of  age  of  the  German 
Crown  Prince,  a  gala  performance  was  given  at  the  Royal  Opera 
House.  Some  $5,000  had  alone  been  spent  in  choice  roses,  with 
which  the  whole  interior  had  been  prettily  decorated.  Huge 
garlands  of  fragrant  roses  hung  from  the  ceiling,  and  the  walls 
and  galleries  were  festooned  with  them.  The  three-days'  visit 
is  said  to  have  cost  the  Berlin  court  a  matter  of  half  a  million 
dollars  There  are  also  some  special  court  fetes  every  year, 
hallowed  by  tradition,  such  as  the  co-called  "Ordensfest,"  in 
the  middle  of  January,  when  all  those  who  have  received 
orders  and  decorations  during  the  preceding  year  or  on  that 
day  are  the  Kaiser's  invited  guests,  a  crowd  usually  running  into 
six  or  seven  thousand;  the  Black  Eagle  Day,  when  the  new 
knights  of  that  most  prized  of  all  Prussian  decorations  are 
installed  and  feted;  and  the  day  when  the  Knights  of  the  Order 
of  St.  John,  an  aristocratic  organization  of  benevolent  tendencies, 
are  invested  with  their  new  dignity  at  the  solemn  annual  chapter. 

At  all  these  occasions  the  ceremony  to  be  followed  is  minutely 
prescribed  and  rigidly  adhered  to,  and  the  court  officers  whose 
special  function  it  is  to  watch  over  the  proper  observance  of  the 
rules  laid  down  do  so  with  great  severity  and  with  a  devotion 


GERMAN    COURTS  237 

beyond  words.  The  present  Kaiser  is  a  great  stickler  for  these 
formalities,  and  has  materially  elaborated  them.  Generally 
speaking,  too,  his  court  has  become  more  exclusive  than  it  was 
during  his  grandfather's  time,  and  this  is  especially  true  as  regards 
the  admission  of  foreigners.  The  greatest  caution  is  exercised 
by  the  Berlin  court  functionaries,  acting  under  the  instructions 
of  the  imperial  couple,  to  exclude  undesirable  elements,  and 
before  invitations  are  issued  a  rigid  examination  has  to  be 
undergone  as  to  antecedents,  social  position,  and  other  points. 
As  regards  Americans,  the  rule  is  to  admit  to  the  Berlin  court 
only  those  few  persons  every  season  who  have  either  become 
personally  acquainted  with  the  Kaiser  and  have  been  found  to 
possess  no  objectionable  traits  of  any  kind,  or  who  are  strongly 
recommended  by  the  American  ambassador.  He  again  is 
expected  to  recommend  only  such  of  his  countrywomen  or  men 
who  have  some  special  claim  for  this  sort  of  recognition,  and  their 
number  in  any  one  year  hardly  ever  exceeds  two  or  three.  The 
lines  are  drawn  not  nearly  so  severely  at  several  of  the  German 
minor  courts,  such  as  Dresden,  Stuttgart,  and  Weimar,  where  ten 
or  twelve  American  ladies  are  often  presented  during  the  season, 
but  even  there  a  good  deal  of  social  or  political  influence  is  usually 
required  to  overcome  the  latent  reluctance  to  admit  the  daugh- 
ters or  sons  of  a  republic  to  these  gatherings  of  royalty.  A 
couple  of  years  ago,  I  remember,  the  prayers  of  about  thirty  fair 
American  ladies  in  Dresden  for  attendance  at  court  were  rejected. 
This  was,  however,  largely  owing  to  the  unfortunate  behaviour 
of  a  reckless  American  girl  the  season  before,  who  had  actually 
snubbed  the  mild  old  King  Albert  of  Saxony,  not  having  recog- 
nized him. 

Between  Easter  and  Pentecost,  as  soon  as  the  weather  has 
become  settled  and  mild,  the  Berlin  court  is  transferred  to 
Potsdam,  where  the  imperial  headquarters  are  at  the  New  Palace, 
that  being  the  largest  and  best  appointed,  and  being  surrounded 
by  a  beautiful  and  very  extensive  park.  There  are  near  by 
some  smaller  palaces,  and  they  are  made  use  of  more  or  less 
during  the  season  as  well.  The  fetes  given  in  Potsdam  are  not 
such  large  affairs,  and  for  the  most  part  consist  in  small  luncheon 
or  dinner  parties,  though  occasionally  large  garden  parties  or 
so-called  "Venetian  Nights"  are  held.  The  Kaiser  has  of  late 


238  GERMANY 

years,  though,  acquired  a  prejudice  against  lengthy  stays  in  his 
Potsdam  palaces,  because  of  their  insufficient  drainage,  a  defect 
which  the  architects  have  been  so  far  unable  to  completely  over- 
come, although  a  matter  of  about  a  million  has  been  unavailingly 
spent  in  the  task.  He  prefers  Wilhelmshohe,  near  Cassel,  the 
quondam  prison  residence  of  Napoleon  III,  after  Sedan  and 
until  peace  had  been  concluded.  And  he  is  quite  right  in  pre- 
ferring it,  for  in  beauty  of  scenery  and  in  convenience  and  com- 
fort that  chateau  is  far  in  advance.  He  is  also  much  less  exposed 
to  vulgar  curiosity,  for  since  bicycles  have  become  inexpensive 
thousands  of  Berlin  youths  and  maidens  ride  out  to  the  New 
Palace  in  Potsdam  on  Sundays,  whenever  the  Kaiser  is  known 
to  be  there,  staring  at  him  and  his  family  through  the  iron 
railing  that  separates  them  from  their  ruler.  And  the  Kaiser 
has  become  cautious,  besides,  since  the  assassination  of  King 
Umberto  of  Italy  near  his  country  residence  of  Monza. 

While  he  is  on  his  annual  summer  trip  to  the  Scandinavian 
seas,  the  Empress  and  some  of  her  younger  children  either 
remain  in  Wilhelmshohe,  or  make  an  outing  somewhere  in 
pleasant  lines,  or  go  yachting.  Later  on,  when  the  shooting 
season  is  in  full  blast,  she  may  accompany  the  Kaiser  to 
one  of  his  northern  estates,  to  Cadinen  in  West  Prussia,  or  to 
Rominten,  perhaps,  whither,  however,  but  a  small  retinue 
accompanies  them. 

Thus,  on  the  whole,  the  imperial  couple  of  Germany  and  their 
court  lead  a  quite  unostentatious  life,  when  compared  with  that 
of  the  rulers  of  former  generations. 

The  Bavarian  court  at  Munich  is  the  only  one  in  Germany 
which  is  even  more  exclusive  than  the  one  of  Berlin,  and  that 
court  has  a  ceremonial,  a  costume,  and  a  series  of  fetes  quite 
elaborate  and  more  or  less  copied  from  those  obtaining  in  Vienna. 
The  old  regent  of  Bavaria,  Luitpold,  reigns  in  place  of  the 
demented  King  Otto,  and  his  son,  Louis,  will  succeed  him.  King 
Otto  is  not  the  only  insane  German  sovereign.  The  other  is 
Prince  Alexander  of  Lippe,  in  whose  place  the  former  Count 
Lippe-Biesterfeld  is  now  regent  The  present  Duke  of  Coburg, 
Charles  Edward,  who  was  the  British  Duke  of  Albany  before 
succession,  is  one  of  several  minors  among  the  German 
sovereigns,  and  Prince  Hohenlohe-Langenburg  is  for  the  present 


GERMAN  COURTS  239 

relieving  him  of  the  cares  of  governing  the  few  thousands  of  his 
subjects. 

There  are  several  oddities  among  the  other  petty  German 
rulers,  as,  for  example,  the  two  principalities  of  Reuss.  The 
elder  line,  that  of  Reuss-Greiz,  was  represented  in  1866  by  a 
bitter  enemy  of  King  William  of  Prussia,  who  sent  his  score  or 
so  of  soldiers  to  give  battle  to  his  haughty  foe.  His  men  accom- 
plished nothing,  however,  and  when  Bismarck  later  on  came  to 
make  peace  with  all  of  Prussia's  enemies,  little  Reuss  and  its  ruler 
were  forgotten.  So  that  to  this  day  there  is,  in  theory,  war 
between  that  tiny  principality  with  its  seventy  thousand  inhabi- 
tants and  Prussia  with  her  thirty-four  millions.  Henry  XXII, 
the  potent  ruler  of  Reuss  (elder  line),  never  forgave  that  slight. 
He  would  rather  have  preferred  to  be  dethroned  than  to  be 
treated  with  such  nonchalance.  He  died  recently  of  a  broken 
heart.  A  curiosity  of  this  petty  dynasty  of  Reuss — much  older 
and  at  one  time  more  powerful  than  the  Hohenzollerns — is  that 
every  member  of  it  must  be  called  Henry.  The  elder  line  goes 
on  counting  Henrys  until  there  have  died  a  hundred  of  them, 
when  they  begin  to  number  anew;  while  the  younger  line,  that  of 
Reuss-Schleiz,  counts  Henrys  only  for  a  century,  then  recom- 
mences the  count. 

The  creeping  in  of  democratic  ideas  and  customs  into  this 
coterie  of  monarchs  and  princes,  until  recently  so  extremely 
exclusive,  may  also  be  observed  nowadays.  There  is  much 
evidence  of  that.  It  is  nothing  new,  of  course,  that  every  member 
of  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty,  like  ill-fated  Louis  XVI,  has  to 
learn  a  trade  during  boyhood,  for  this  curious  custom  is  two  cen- 
turies old.  The  present  crown  prince  is  a  skilled  cabinet-maker, 
so  that  if  at  any  time  he  should  lose  his  bigger  and  more  profitable 
"job,"  he  might  turn  his  hand  to  this  honourable  trade  and 
earn  another  living.  He  keeps  up  his  proficiency  by  constant 
practice,  and  his  rooms  are  full  of  small  and  cunningly  devised 
specimens  of  his  skill,  such  as  cupboards,  bookshelves,  etc.  His 
uncle,  Prince  George,  of  Prussia,  recently  deceased,  was,  however, 
the  only  member  of  the  house  who  followed  seriously  and 
by  natural  preference  a  calling  humbler  than  that  of  officer  in 
the  army  or  navy,  the  two  professions  regarded  in  Germany  as 
the  only  ones  not  dishonouring  noble  blood.  This  rara  avis, 


24o  GERMANY 

in  fact,  was  a  man  of  exclusively  literary  and  artistic  tastes;  he 
wrote  a  good  deal  under  the  pseudonym  of  G.  Conrad,  and  some 
of  his  historical  dramas  had  quite  a  run  in  Berlin  at  one  time. 
He  was  a  bibliophile,  and  has  left  fine  old  editions  of  early  date. 
He  also  collected  early  prints  and  engravings,  and  was  forever 
"mousing"  around  the  shops  of  antiquaries  and  booksellers, 
hunting  bargains.  These  tastes  of  Prince  George  of  Prussia,  it 
is  almost  needless  to  point  out,  were  looked  upon  as  decidedly 
low  by  his  noble  relatives  of  the  Hohenzollern  family,  but  the 
prince  did  not  care  a  button  about  that.  His  friends  and  asso- 
ciates were  almost  exclusively  writers  and  artists,  and  he  never 
appeared  at  any  court  festivity  since  his  nephew,  the  present 
Kaiser,  ascended  the  throne.  In  his  vest  pocket  he  always 
carried  a  microscope,  with  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  deciphering 
dim  inscriptions  and  signatures  on  old  coins  or  books. 

Duke  Charles  Theodore  of  Bavaria  is  another  man  of  similar 
type.  He  is  quite  wealthy,  and  there  is  no  need  of  his  working 
for  his  bread,  but  he  hates  idleness,  and  has  a  great  love  for  his 
profession.  He  is  a  noted  specialist  in  eye  and  ear  diseases,  and 
practises  incessantly,  even  when  away  for  the  summer  on  hi? 
picturesque  estate  in  the  Bavarian  Alps.  Some  time  ago  he 
suitably  commemorated  the  thousandth  eye  operation  per- 
formed by  himself  by  issuing  a  pamphlet  describing  some  of 
the  most  interesting  cures  wrought  by  him.  While  in  Munich, 
during  the  rest  of  the  year,  he  assiduously  cultivates  the  acquaint- 
ance of  his  colleagues,  the  other  physicians,  and  is  a  frequent 
attendant  at  the  noted  clinics  there.  His  patients  come  to  him 
from  every  walk  of  life,  and  he  treats  them  all  alike.  The  poor 
he  charges  nothing,  but  the  wealthy  patients  are  expected  to  pay 
the  usual  fees.  His  earnings  are  devoted  to  charitable  purposes. 

The  reigning  Duke  of  Saxe-Meiningen  is  a  great  lover  of  the 
stage,  and  is  considered  the  best  stage  manager  in  Germany. 
He  made  his  little  court  theatre  in  Meiningen  a  model  institution 
in  some  respects,  and  reformed  stage  methods,  especially  so  far 
as  historical  truth  in  the  costuming  and  scenery  part  goes,  and 
as  regards  the  intelligent  use  of  the  stage  chorus  and  of  groups 
intended  to  represent  crowds,  such  as  are  called  for  in  most 
Shakespearean  dramas,  as  well  as  in  those  of  the  German  classics. 
They  talk  of  a  Meiningen  School  of  Acting  in  Germany — i.  e.,  the 


GERMAN   COURTS  241 

one  which  pays  special  attention  to  this  part  of  stagecraft. 
The  old  Duke  George  got  his  wife,  too,  from  the  stage,  she  having 
been  a  popular  actress,  and  made  her  Baroness  Heldburg.  There 
are  several  children  from  this  union.  Of  course,  their  mother 
being  only  "morganatically "  joined  in  wedlock,  these  children 
have  no  chance  of  ever  succeeding  to  the  throne,  but  they  are  in 
all  other  respects  treated  by  him  as  the  children  from  his  two 
previous  wives,  who  were  of  royal  rank.  Duke  George  has  made 
for  years  theatrical  folk  almost  his  only  companions,  and  when  in 
trouble  or  financial  difficulties  he  has  often  stood  their  friend. 
The  subjects  of  this  unprejudiced  ruler  are  perfectly  satisfied 
with  these  doings  of  their  duke,  and  the  little  duchy  is  indeed 
one  of  the  happiest  and  best-governed  in  the  empire. 

The  Kaiser  himself,  however,  has  in  a  certain  sense  done  more 
than  any  other  ruler  in  Germany  to  democratize  monarchy. 
In  many  respects  he  is  an  autocrat  and  of  tyrannical  instincts, 
while  in  others  he  is  the  most  democratic  ruler  of  them  all.  As 
the  humour  takes  him,  he  will  invite  the  darkest  reactionaries 
among  his  suite,  or  he  will  choose  the  most  liberal-minded 
captains  of  industry  to  accompany  him  on  one  of  his  frequent 
pleasure  trips.  On  a  recent  occasion  he  selected  as  guests  on  a 
yachting  tour  the  leading  men  in  German  manufacture  and 
trade,  two  of  them,  viz.,  Isidore  Loewe  and  Georg  Bleichroder, 
being  Jews.  On  another  occasion  he  showed  great  favour 
to  three  other  enterprising  Jews,  viz.,  Albert  Ballin,  the 
director  of  the  Hamburg- America  Line;  L.  M.  Goldberger,  a 
leading  Berlin  merchant;  and  Ernst  von  Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 
a  relative  of  the  famous  composer  and  a  prominent  German 
banker.  In  this  he  gives  grave  offense  to  the  Prussian  nobility, 
and  they  have  not  minced  matters  in  their  particular  organ,  the 
Adelsblatt,  in  which  they  predicted  the  impending  downfall  of 
the  monarchy,  owing  to  such  consorting  with  the  canaille. 

Perhaps,  however,  "morganatic"  union;  among  the  rulers  and 
princes  of  Germany  have  made  more  serious  inroads  into  the 
"divine  right"  theory  than  any  other  factor.  Such  marriages 
have  become  more  and  more  frequent,  and  what  is  still  more  sig- 
nificant, they  now  create  hardly  any  sensation.  In  the  Hapsburg 
dynasty  some  cases  have  occurred  of  late  that  drew  the  attention 
of  the  world,  and  it  is  remembered,  of  course,  that  the  present 


242  GERMANY 

heir  to  the  imperial  crown  of  Austria-Hungary  married  not  many 
months  ago  a  Czech  lady  of  inferior  station.  But  on  a  smaller 
scale  the  same  thing  is  happening  all  the  time  in  Germany  as 
well.  The  fact  is  deeply  deplored  by  the  dyed-in-the-wool  mon- 
archists there,  but  by  nobody  else,  for  almost  every  one  of  these 
unions,  in  which  the  dictates  of  the  heart  triumphed  over  dynastic 
scruples,  has  turned  out  well.  The  marriage  of  the  late  Prince 
Albrecht  of  Prussia  and  the  lady  of  humble  birth  who  was  after- 
wards created  Countess  Hohenau  stood  for  fifty  years  as  a 
living  illustration  of  this.  The  charming  villa  owned  by  this 
couple  on  the  borders  of  the  Elbe,  in  Saxony,  was  for  many  years 
the  abode  of  almost  unalloyed  marital  bliss,  and  the  fact  that  he 
and  his  wife  were  virtually  ostracized  at  the  Prussian  court 
mattered  very  little  to  Prince  Albrecht. 

Erroneous  opinions  are  held  widely  as  to  the  precise  meaning 
of  a  morganatic  union,  or,  as  it  is  frequently  termed  in  Germany, 
"marriage  on  the  left  hand."  Such  a  union  is  in  all  respects  save 
one  the  same  as  another  marriage.  It  is  solemnized  by  the 
priest,  and  figures  as  a  marriage  in  the  full  sense  in  the  records 
and  civil  registers.  The  issue  is  held  as  born  in  lawful  wedlock, 
and  they  are  entitled  under  the  laws  of  Germany  to  their  proper 
and  equitable  share  of  the  private  fortunes  of  both  father  and 
mother.  The  only  exception  is  this:  The  father  or  mother 
being  of  royal  lineage,  while  the  other  partner  is  not,  the  latter 
does  not  enter  into  the  prerogatives  and  enjoyment  of  the  higher 
rank,  and  the  children  born  to  such  a  couple  cannot  inherit  the 
throne,  if  in  the  direct  line  of  succession  they  would  otherwise  be 
entitled  to  such  inheritance.  In  other  words,  their  civil  status 
is  perfect,  and  the  union  itself  is  considered  as  an  honourable  one 
for  both  sides,  but  for  dynastic  and  political  reasons,  as  pre- 
scribed partly  in  constitutions  and  partly  in  dynastic  house 
regulations,  the  issue  of  such  marriages  is  excluded  from  the 
right  of  succession.  Many  of  the  children  of  such  unions  have 
made  names  for  themselves,  of  which  truth  the  Battenbergs  are 
a  striking  exemplification. 

Just  to  cite  a  few  such  cases  of  recent  occurrence,  Princess 
Elisabeth  of  Bavaria,  granddaughter  to  the  present  regent  of 
Bavaria,  may  first  be  mentioned.  She  married,  in  the  face  of  the 
strenuous  objections  of  her  whole  family,  Baron  Seefried,  then 


GERMAN   COURTS  243 

a  young  and  handsome  lieutenant  in  the  Bavarian  army,  but 
of  ancient  and  noble  lineage,  and  owner  of  several  fine  estates. 
Although  her  aunt,  Crown  Princess  Stephanie  of  Austria,  and 
the  old  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  both  espoused  her  cause,  her 
family  did  not  relent,  and  the  young  couple  were  forced  to  leave 
the  country  and  to  seek  refuge  in  Austria,  where  Baron  Seefried 
was  given  an  honourable  position  in  the  army.  They  are  living 
very  happily  together.  Another  Bavarian  princess,  Elvira, 
married  a  Bohemian  nobleman,  Count  Wrbna,  owner  of  the 
large  estate  of  Holloschau  in  Austria,  and  lives  there  a  quiet 
and  domestic  life. 

Prince  Charles,  brother  of  the  grand  duke  of  Baden,  likewise 
contracted  a  morganatic  marriage  with  Baroness  Beust,  and  he 
and  his  children  relinquished  all  claims  to  succession.  A  sister 
of  the  reigning  grand  duke  of  Hesse,  Princess  Victoria,  married 
her  cousin,  himself  the  issue  of  a  morganatic  union,  Prince 
Battenberg.  A  granddaughter  of  the  reigning  grand  duke  of 
Mecklenburg-Strelitz,  Princess  Marie,  married,  not  a  long  while 
ago,  and  under  somewhat  sensational  circumstances,  an 
adventurer  who  was  subsequently  created  Count  Jametel.  Duke 
Constantine  of  Oldenburg  is  married  morganatically  to  a  former 
cook,  now  created  Countess  Zarnekau.  One  of  the  sons  of  Duke 
George  of  Saxe-Meiningen,  Prince  Ernst,  is  married  to  a  former 
governess,  now  Baroness  Saalfeld.  His  father,  as  mentioned 
above,  has  a  former  actress,  Baroness  Heldburg,  for  wife. 

From  these  and  other  facts  it  might  be  supposed  that  mon- 
archism  is  dying  out  in  Germany,  but  it  would  be  rash  to  draw 
such  a  conclusion.  Monarchism  is  unquestionably  in  process  of 
transformation  there,  and  much  of  the  needless  formalism  and 
of  the  elaborate  ceremony  still  attaching  to  it  at  this  hour  will 
probably  be  lopped  off  within  a  generation  or  two.  But  the 
roots  of  monarchism  lie  too  deep  there,  and  are  too  firmly 
entwined  around  the  historic  past  of  the  nation,  to  fall  as  quickly 
into  'innocuous  desuetude"  as  casual  visitors  to  Germany  are 
often  apt  to  imagine. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE    PRESS 

IT  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  German  public  life  that  the  press 
is  on  a  rather  low  plane.  Not  low  morally,  by  any  means,  but 
financially  and  in  point  of  influence.  The  enormous  and  rapid 
development  of  Germany  during  the  past  decade  as  a  com- 
mercial and  industrial  country  ought  to  have  had  a  similarly 
stimulating  and  expanding  effect  in  the  development  and  growth 
of  the  German  press.  And  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  some 
respects  at  least  an  effect  of  this  kind  is  noticeable.  But  this 
effect  is  so  slight  and  so  out  of  all  proportion  with  the  astound- 
ing growth  in  the  other  directions  mentioned  as  to  make  the 
inference  irresistible  that  some  gravely  disturbing  factors  have 
been  at  work. 

Looking  the  broad  field  over,  there  are,  above  all,  three  facts 
that  strike  the  observer.  The  first  is  the  very  large  number  of 
periodical  publications  and,  per  contra,  the  very  small  number 
of  them  that  rise  above  mediocrity.  Next,  the  amazingly  small 
amount  of  influence  upon  public  and  private  life  exerted  by  all 
but  a  few  of  them.  And  lastly,  the  comparatively  low  status 
in  the  popular  estimation  occupied  by  the  whole  class  of  writers, 
publishers,  and  contributors  to  these  publications. 

This  at  first  sight  seems  all  the  more  inexplicable  when  the 
fact  is  taken  into  consideration  that  journalism  is  by  no  means  a 
plant  of  recent  culture  in  Germany.  Its  roots,  in  fact,  reach 
back  as  far  as  in  either  Eng1and,  France,  or  this  country.  It  is 
almost  300  years  ago  that  the  first  newspapers  were  started  in 
Germany,  and  during  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
was  a  steady  growth  in  every  direction — increase  in  the  number 
of  them;  increase  in  circulation;  and  increase  in  influence. 
During  the  murderous  Thirty- Years'  War,  regular  and  irregular 
newsletters  describing  battles,  sieges,  massacres,  and  all  the 
sensational  events  on  the  theatres  of  action  as  well  as  in  the  rest 

244 


THE    PRESS  245 

of  Europe,  were  issued  by  enterprising  publishers,  and  many  of 
these  sheets  were  even  quaintly  illustrated.  Something  over  a 
century  later,  during  the  Seven- Years'  War,  the  press  of 
Germany  had  already  attained  to  that  degree  of  development 
and  influence,  that  it  was  recognized  by  the  belligerents  as  an 
important  factor  in  swaying  the  minds,  the  prejudices  and 
sympathies  of  the  world.  Frederick  the  Great  particularly  had 
a  keen  appreciation  of  the  power  of  printer's  ink  during  his  whole 
reign  of  forty-six  years,  and  had  practically  if  not  theoretically 
proclaimed  freedom  of  the  press.  His  famous  dictum:  "  Leave 
the  gazettes  undisturbed  !"  was  more  or  less  strictly  obeyed  in 
his  dominions.  It  is  on  record  of  him  that  on  one  occasion,  riding 
leisurely  through  the  streets  of  Berlin,  and  noticing  a  newspaper 
placard  pasted  high  on  a  wall,  wherein  he  was  handled  rather 
severely  by  the  writer,  he  stopped  his  attendant  courtiers  from 
tearing  down  the  libel ,  grimly  saying :  ' '  H ang  it  lower  ! ' '  Through 
the  struggle  of  1813-15,  when  Germany,  humbled  into  the  dust 
by  Napoleon  I,  rose  in  her  might  for  the  restoration  of  her 
national  independence,  the  press  all  over  the  country  did  its  share 
nobly  and  patriotically.  The  same  may  be  said  of  that  second 
great  struggle  with  France  that  fell  into  the  year  1870-71. 

Naturally,  though,  a  country  that  had  been  reduced  to  a  mere 
"geographical  idea,"  as  Germany  had  been  for  the  fifty  years 
antedating  the  war  with  Austria  in  1866,  ruled  over  autocrati- 
cally and  split  up  into  a  large  number  of  small  and  impotent 
states,  with  hardly  any  national  conceptions  or  aims  in  common, 
was  no  favourable  soil  on  which  to  raise  a  powerful  and  inde- 
pendent press.  Before  1870  few  Prussian  newspapers  circu- 
lated outside  of  Prussia.  The  Saxon  and  Bavarian  papers 
confined  their  literary  and  their  "counting-room"  efforts  to  the 
circumscribed  territory  of  their  own  "narrower  fatherland," 
as  the  phrase  then  was.  The  German  press  as  it  exists  to-day 
dates  only  since  the  establishment  of  the  present  empire,  thirty- 
one  years  ago.  At  that  time,  and  soon  after,  nearly  all  the  big 
German  newspapers  that  to-day  enjoy  large  circulations  and  a 
measure  at  least  of  influence  upon  the  public  mind  of  the  nation 
were  called  into  life.  Political  parties  were  founded,  such  as  the 
National  Liberal  (for  nearly  a  generation  the  leading  party  of 
Germany),  the  Centre  or  Ultramontane  party,  the  Socialist,  and 


246  GERMANY 

others,  and  party  mouthpieces  were  founded  at  the  same 
time.  The  main  periodicals,  too,  have  come  into  existence  only 
since  then.  Thus,  in  a  certain  sense  at  least,  the  German  press 
owes  its  rise  to  the  unification  of  the  fatherland,  as  so  much  else  in 
Germany  does,  and  is,  in  its  points  of  weakness  and  of  strength, 
the  creature  and  the  mirror  of  political,  social  and  economic 
conditions  that  have  developed  since. 

There  are  no  such  papers  of  vast  wealth  and  world-wide 
reputation  published  in  Germany  as  the  London  Times,  the 
Paris  Figaro,  or  the  New  York  Herald,  papers  that  stand  in  the 
eyes  of  other  nations  as  typical  and  as  embodying,  in  a  way,  the 
political  aspirations,  foibles,  prejudices  and  leanings  of  the 
average  Englishman,  Frenchman,  or  American.  The  foreigner 
visiting  Berlin  for  the  first  time  is  astonished  at  nothing  so  much 
as  when,  noticing  everywhere  in  the  business  centre  of  the  city 
the  evidences  of  rapid  progress  and  fast  increasing  wealth,  the 
handsome  and  often  palatial  structures  reared  of  late  years  by 
the  banks,  the  leading  merchants  and  storekeepers,  he  inquires 
his  way  to  some  of  the  foremost  newspaper  offices,  and  finds 
them,  instead  of  being  housed  sumptuously  and  on  a  large  scale, 
as  they  are  in  the  other  leading  capitals  of  the  world,  occupying 
mean  and  cramped  quarters  in  backyards  of  uninviting-looking 
low  buildings,  to  all  appearance  eking  out  a  miserable  existence. 
Often  the  passer-by  hardly  notices  a  small  and  cheap  wooden 
sign  over  the  passageway  towards  the  rear  buildings,  proclaim- 
ing the  name  of  one  of  the  leading  "arbiters  of  thought,"  the 
organ  perhaps  of  a  powerful  political  party.  The  Berlin  organ 
of  the  wealthiest  wing  of  the  aristocratic  Conservative  party, 
Die  Post,  whose  stockholders  are  principally  to  be  found  among 
the  titled  estate-holders  and  among  the  highest  government 
officials,  occupies,  for  instance,  quarters  which  a  well-to-do 
provincial  paper  is  this  country  would  scorn,  and  its  editor-in- 
chief  is  hidden  in  a  little  sparsely  furnished  room,  with  an  oil 
lamp  on  his  desk,  and  as  sole  master  of  ceremonies  outside  in  the 
cold  corridor  a  freckled  and  hungry-looking  office  boy.  Eugene 
Richter,  the  foremost  Liberal  leader  in  Germany,  and  editor  of 
the  Freisinnige  Zeitung,  which  is  the  mouthpiece  of  the  financial 
aristocracy  of  Berlin,  has  to  climb  up  three  steep  and  narrow 
flights  of  stairs  of  an  old-fashioned  house  in  a  side  street  to  his 


THE   PRESS  247 

editorial  sanctum,  measuring  about  ten  by  twelve  and  in  which 
a  small  looking-glass,  fly-bespecked  and  in  a  dingy  frame,  is  the 
costliest  article. 

The  great  government  organ,  the  Norddeutsche  Allgemeine 
Zeitung  (North  German  Gazette},  which,  since  Bismarck's  accession 
to  power,  has  been  the  thunderer  employed  to  scare  and  terrify 
the  political  opponents  of  the  empire,  is  housed  in  a  similarly 
inexpensive  manner.  The  same  might  be  said  of  scores  of  other 
important  leaders  of  public  thought  all  over  the  empire,  and 
this  is  true  as  well,  and  even  to  a  greater  extent,  of  the  editorial 
and  business  offices  of  nearly  all  the  weekly  or  monthly  periodi- 
cals. Every  American  who  has  ever  visited  Munich  must  have 
been  amazed  in  locating  the  home  of  that  ubiquitous  dissem- 
inator of  German  humour,  the  Fliegende  Blatter,  for  on  the  out- 
side it  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  a  second-rate  pawnshop, 
and  if  he  has  ventured  inside  he  has  found  things  nearly  as 
unpretentious. 

These  are  external  signs  of  the  fact  that  the  German  press  by 
no  means  occupies  that  place  of  prominence  in  the  thought  of 
the  great  public  which  it  does  in  this  country.  There  are  many 
other  things  pointing  in  the  same  direction.  The  amount  of 
revenue,  for  instance,  derived  by  the  newspapers  from  adver- 
tising can  by  no  means  compare  with  that  obtained  by  them  in 
some  other  countries.  Where  the  income  from  that  source  alone 
runs  into  the  millions  of  dollars  in  the  case  of  the  most  influential 
papers  in  this  country,  England  or  France,  in  Germany  it  runs 
but  into  the  hundreds  of  thousands  in  all  but  one  or  two  cases . 
The  advertising  patronage  does  not  come  from  every  class  of  the 
population,  high  and  low,  but  almost  entirely  from  the  lower  and 
middle  classes.  The  big  German  firms  do  not  advertise  at  all  in 
the  newspapers,  excepting  in  the  financial  and  trade  sheets. 
The  small  shopkeepers  probably  form  the  most  important  class 
of  newspaper  advertisers. 

The  political  influence  of  the  press  is  also  much  smaller  in 
Germany.  It  is  seldom  that  any  paper  there  engages  in  the  task 
of  ferreting  out  the  truth  about  any  important  public  question 
which  for  the  moment  engrosses  public  attention,  and  cam- 
paigns for  the  purpose  of  uncovering  some  gigantic  piece  of 
political  or  economic  fraud,  plot,  or  jobbery,  or  of  proving  or 


248  GERMANY 

disproving  the  justice  of  some  great  party  or  government 
measure,  and  of  paralyzing  the  political  influence  of  some  party 
leader  or  party  shibboleth,  are  still  more  infrequent.  In  that 
sense  at  least  the  German  press  shows  a  woeful  lack  of  public  spirit 
and  enterprise,  and  this  quite  naturally  robs  it  of  a  great  deal  of 
prestige.  This  fact  is,  however,  not  altogether  the  fault  of  the 
press,  but  must  be  attributed  to  a  large  extent  to  the  tendencies 
of  the  Kaiser,  the  whole  government,  and  of  the  ruling  classes, 
which  are  decidedly  hostile  to  an  independent  and  strong  press, 
and,  of  course,  hostile  as  well  to  such  important  service  by  the 
press  as  calculated  to  curtail  their  own  influence,  now  para- 
mount. The  obstacles,  too,  which  editors,  reporters,  and  other 
writers  for  the  press  find  in  their  way  in  honestly  attempting 
to  fulfil  this,  one  of  the  most  important  public  functions  of  an 
untrammeled  press,  are  vastly  greater  in  Germany  than  in  other 
countries,  owing  to  the  reasons  above  alluded  to,  and  to  others. 

It  is  but  of  recent  occurrence  that  a  high  German  court  in 
its  decision  in  a  sensational  trial  for  an  alleged  press  offense, 
proclaimed  in  so  many  words  that  no  such  right  as  the  enlighten- 
ment of  the  masses  on  public  questions  or  the  criticizing  of 
public  measures  held  of  injury  to  popular  rights,  could  be  vindi- 
cated to  the  newspapers,  but  that  their  sole  business  consisted 
in  disseminating  and  vending  the  news.  This  decision,  amazing 
as  it  appears  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  met  with 
but  feeble  protests  even  from  the  Liberal  press,  and  it  stands 
uncontroverted  to-day.  However,  with  all  these  disadvantages 
under  which  the  German  press  undoubtedly  is  labouring,  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  if  that  keen  rivalry  and  that  broad 
enterprise  existed  in  it  as  a  body  which,  for  instance,  is  such 
a  characteristic  quality  of  the  American  press,  much  might  be 
achieved  by  it  even  with  present  conditions  which  is  now  left 
undone,  and  even  unattempted. 

The  splitting-up  of  political  thought  in  Germany  is,  however, 
probably  the  most  serious  single  factor  hindering  a  healthy 
growth  of  the  press  and  of  its  influence.  Where  there  are  about 
a  score  of  political  factions,  as  is  the  case  in  the  empire,  no  single 
paper,  or  group  of  papers,  can  acquire  dominating  influence, 
very  large  circulation,  or  that  measure  of  great  wealth  which 
would  render  it  capable  of  inaugurating  and  sustaining  a  thor- 


THE   PRESS  249 

oughly  consistent  and  powerful  policy,  and  of  accomplishing 
those  big  tasks  in  the  field  of  journalistic  achievements  which 
jointly  enable  a  newspaper  to  become  a  real  power  in  shaping 
public  thought.  This  fact  has  been  demonstrated  a  number  of 
times  in  Germany.  During  that  period,  for  example,  when  the 
National  Liberal  party  was  the  largest  and  most  potent  in  the 
empire,  the  leading  organ  of  that  party,  the  National  Zeitung, 
likewise  enjoyed  a  corresponding  measure  of  public  influence 
and  a  large  circulation.  With  the  split  of  that  party  into  two 
unequal  halves,  and  with  its  enormous  decrease  in  voting 
strength,  has  also  come  a  great  loss  in  every  sense  to  that  news- 
paper, until  to-day  the  paper  is  practically  ignored  all  over 
Germany.  Each  of  the  German  political  factions,  each  wing 
of  these  factions,  and  again  each  shade  of  opinion  represented 
within,  has  its  organs  in  the  press,  and  each  of  them  fights  the 
other  factions,  and  often  the  other  wing  within  the  same  faction, 
tooth  and  nail,  thus  practically  rendering  impossible  the  con- 
solidation of  public  opinion  on  nearly  every  important  problem 
that  faces  the  nation.  This  discord  within  the  press  itself 
hinders  progress  in  political  thought  and  ideals  immensely,  and 
incidentally,  of  course,  it  hinders  the  growth  of  the  German 
press  in  power,  wealth,  and  influence  in  the  same  ratio. 

The  party  organ,  then,  is  still  the  rule  in  Germany,  and  to 
some  extent  at  least  the  "organ"  rises  in  importance  and  circu- 
lation with  the  party  whose  cause  it  espouses.  A  somewhat 
unique  position  is  held  by  the  Socialist  press  and  by  some  indi- 
vidual papers.  Of  the  latter  the  Kreuzzeitung  deserves  special 
mention.  This  organ  of  the  larger  half  of  the  Conservative 
party  is  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  influential  papers  in  the 
empire.  Its  clientele  is  not  nearly  so  large  as  that  of  a  number 
of  other  papers,  but  is  made  up  almost  exclusively  of  the  ruling 
elements — government  officials,  judges,  army  officers,  persons 
belonging  to  the  immediate  entourage  of  the  Kaiser  and  of  the 
other  sovereigns  in  Germany;  the  Kaiser  himself  reads  it  regu- 
larly. In  its  influence  in  shaping  the  course  of  legislation  and 
nearly  all  other  spheres  of  public  activity  the  Kreuzzeitung  out- 
vies the  rest  of  the  German  press  combined.  It  is  a  real  power, 
if  an  insidious  one,  for  it  excels  in  a  peculiar  sort  of  journalistic 
style,  consisting  largely  in  innuendo,  and  is  hardly  ever  out- 


2$o  GERMANY 

spoken  or  vigourous  in  its  expressions,  but  instead  sows  its  seed 
in  the  mind  of  the  reader  by  cautiously  worded  and  half  sug- 
gested arguments,  indirect  more  often  than  direct,  but  never 
failing  in  its  effect  on  the  mo^t  influential  classes  in  Germany. 
Bismarck  for  years  was  one  of  the  regular  contributors  to  this 
paper,  and  among  its  anonymous  writers  are  to  be  found  scores 
of  the  most  prominent  men  in  every  department  of  public  life. 
The  Kreuzzeitung  is,  in  fact,  so  influential  a  paper  that  it  has,  on 
several  critical  occasions,  dared  to  successfully  oppose  the  kings 
of  Prussia  and  their  successors,  the  German  emperors,  and 
maintained  so  persistent  and  bitter  a  guerilla  warfare  in  behaJf 
of  the  interests  of  the  privileged  classes  as  to  defeat  important 
royal  plans.  This  has  been  the  case,  too,  during  the  reign  of  the 
present  ruler  of  Germany,  and  though  for  a  time  William  II 
proscribed  the  paper,  and  allowed  no  copy  of  it  to  be  delivered 
within  his  castles,  the  influence  of  the  paper  actually  increased, 
for  it  represented  at  that  time  quite  faithfully  the  convictions  of 
the  ruling  classes  as  against  those  of  the  Kaiser.  That  was  the 
time  when  the  Kaiser  still  indulged  the  hope  of  merging  the  con- 
flicting class  interests  of  the  population  into  one  homogeneous 
whole,  and  when  he  believed  in  the  feasibility  of  winning  the 
Socialist  masses  over  to  the  support  of  the  throne.  That  dream, 
however,  vanished  into  air  after  awhile,  and  then  he  found  him- 
self once  more  in  consonance  with  the  Kreuzzeitung,  and  he 
resumed  the  daily  practice  of  reading  it. 

The  Vossische  Zeitung  likewise  occupies  a  peculiar  place.  It 
is  older  than  the  Kreuzzeitung.  for  it  celebrated  its  centenary 
some  time  ago.  It  was  for  many  years  the  chief  organ  of 
advanced  political  thought  in  Prussia,  as  the  Kreuzzeitung  is  the 
leading  exponent  of  reactionism,  and  was  largely  instrumental 
in  precipitating  the  Berlin  revolution  of  1848,  and  in  wresting  a 
liberal  constitution  from  the  then  reigning  king  of  Prussia, 
Frederick  William  IV.  From  that  proud  eminence,  however, 
the  paper,  yielding  to  purely  commercial  reasons,  sank  some 
years  ago,  and  although  still  tamely  Liberal  in  expounding 
political  thought,  it  no  longer  holds  a  prominent  place  as  a 
political  organ,  making  itself  instead  the  mouthpiece  of  the 
industrial  and  manufacturing  interests  of  the  empire.  In  that 
capacity  it  has,  however,  gained  in  circulation  and  wealth,  and 


THE    PRESS  251 

is  to-day  one  of  the  most  profitable  pieces  of  newspaper  property 
in  Germany.  The  Berlin  Tageblatt,  on  the  other  hand,  which 
has  stood  faithfully  by  its  guns,  and  is  stiL!  one  of  the  main  organs 
of  Liberalism,  is  now  barely  paying  expenses,  though  its  political 
influence  is  great. 

The  rise  of  the  Socialist  press  has  kept  step  with  that  of  the 
party,  and  the  number  of  papers  published  by  it  is  greater  than 
that  advocating  any  other  form  of  political  creed.  Though 
published  in  the  main  for  the  masses  of  the  labouring  population, 
its  intellectual  level  is  relatively  high,  which  speaks  well  for 
the  mental  status  of  its  readers.  Though  hampered  in  every 
possible  way  by  the  imperial  and  by  every  State  government  in 
Germany,  and  though  nearly  every  Socialist  editor  has  served 
one  or  more  terms  in  jail  for  Use  majeste  or  other  press  offenses, 
the  general  tone  of  the  Socialist  press  is,  nevertheless,  vigourous 
and  independent  enough.  The  enormous  ramifications  of  the 
party,  reaching  into  every  department  of  public  and  private 
life,  and  into  the  very  chambers  of  royalty  itself,  enables  it  more 
often  than  the  whole  remainder  of  the  German  press  to  publish 
important  domestic  news  first.  No  document  is  so  secret  or 
important  that  it  escapes  the  friends  of  the  party,  and  party  dis- 
cipline is  so  perfect  that  there  has  never  been  a  case  of  betrayal 
of  its  informants  on  the  part  of  Socialist  editors  and  publishers. 
The  Socialist  press  is  owned  and  managed  by  the  party  itself,  and 
profits  or  losses  of  the  various  papers  fall  to  the  share  of  the 
party.  The  central  party  organ,  the  Vorivdrts  in  Berlin,  is  in 
some  essential  respects  a  better  newspaper  than  the  great 
majority  of  its  German  confreres,  and  boasts  a  deservedly  large 
circulation.  All  the  Socialist  members  of  the  Reichstag,  of  the 
various  State  legislatures,  and  of  the  municipal  councils,  are 
regular  contributors  to  the  Socialist  press,  and  it  is  partly  to 
this  fact  that  much  early  and  important  information  appearing 
in  it  can  be  traced.  But  aside  from  that,  in  trenchant  comment 
and  incisive  editorial  work  the  palm  must  be  awarded  to  the 
Socialist  press  in  Germany.  The  pamphlets,  too,  and  other 
campaign  literature  issued  by  the  Socialist  press  under  the 
guidance  of  its  party  management,  is  usually  more  to  the  point 
and  of  greater  effect  than  is  the  similar  work  of  the  other  papers. 
Most  of  this  work  is  done  as  a  labour  of  love  by  the  keenest  minds 


2  52  GERMANY 

of  the  party,  men  like  Bebel,  Singer,  Bernstein,  David,  Auer, 
Vollmar  and  others.  During  times  of  political  excitement  the 
Vorwarts  and  other  Socialist  papers  often  issue  extra  editions 
running  into  hundreds  of  thousands. 

Of  the  so-called  "independent" — i.  e,,  politically  indifferent, 
press,  which  is  of  very  recent  growth  in  Germany,  the  Berlin 
Localanzeiger  is  the  most  conspicuous  type.  This  paper  is  solely 
a  sensational  one.  It  spends  more  money  for  news  than  any 
other  in  the  empire,  and  often  lays  out  a  small  fortune  in 
obtaining  a  sensational  piece  of  news  earlier,  or  exclusively  for  its 
own  use.  Its  editor  learned  the  rudiments  of  his  profession  in 
this  country,  and  its  publisher  has  earned  quite  a  number  of 
millions  by  his  (for  Germany)  novel  methods  during  the  last 
five  years.  Its  circulation  is  about  300,000,  and  is  the  largest  of 
any  newspaper  in  Germany.  Though  politically  indifferent,  the 
Localanzeiger  is  intensely  loyal  in  its  comment  on  the  Kaiser's 
sayings  and  doings. 

What  is  styled  the  "officieuse"  press  in  Germany  calls  also  for 
some  explanation.  The  term  is  habitually  applied  to  those 
German  newspapers  which  are  more  or  less  controlled  by 
the  government.  Yet  they  differ  much  in  degree.  It  was 
Bismarck  who  first  organized  this  system  of  influencing  public 
opinion  at  home  and  abroad.  For  Bismarck,  although  he  had  a 
hearty  contempt  for  the  individual  journalist,  and  although  the 
present  era  of  practically  nullifying  the  constitutional  provision 
guaranteeing  freedom  of  the  press  was  really  inaugurated  by 
that  man  of  "blood  and  iron,"  nevertheless  had  a  very  lively  and 
correct  appreciation  of  the  importance  of  printer's  ink.  He 
deemed  it  of  the  utmost  consequence  to  have  a  number  of  papers 
always  on  hand  for  his  purposes.  The  system  organized  by 
him,  and  the  means  employed,  are  still  substantially  the  same 
to-day.  He  had  the  interest  from  the  Guelph  Fund,  or  as  it 
was  popularly  known,  the  ''Reptile  Fund" — i.  e.,  the  private 
fortune  of  the  dispossessed  king  of  Hanover,  amounting  to 
some  $8,000,000,  at  his  disposal  in  <; influencing"  newspapers, 
individual  correspondents  and  editors.  These  men  and  papers 
he  sought  and  found  not  alone  in  Germany,  but  in  Austria.  Italy. 
France,  England,  Russia,  and  even  in  America.  They  had  to  do 
yeomen's  service  for  him,  and  he  held  them  to  strict  account. 


THE   PRESS  253 

They  aided  him  very  materially  in  his  work,  and  no  dunce,  any 
more  than  a  man  of  independent  or  unreliable  tendencies,  was  tol- 
erated by  him  in  this  international  galaxy  of  journalistic  bravos. 
It  was  under  his  regime  that  the  Norddeutsche  Allgemeine 
Zeitung  in  Berlin  was  started,  largely  with  government  money, 
which  paper  then  made  a  regular  contract  with  him,  placing 
a  certain  amount  of  blank  space  on  its  first  page  permanently 
at  the  government's  disposal.  This  contract  has  since  been 
renewed  several  times,  and  is  in  force  to-day.  A  similar  under- 
standing exists  with  the  Cologne  Gazette,  but  that  paper,  on 
account  of  its  old-time  reputation  for  foreign  news  and  because 
of  its  large  circulation  in  foreign  countries,  is  mainly  used  for  such 
items  of  official  news  or  for  such  attacks  on  foreign  statesmen 
or  governments  as  are  largely  intended  to  have  an  effect 
abroad,  while  the  first-named  paper  is  mainly  used  for  official 
thunder  intended  for  home  consumption.  The  Reichsanzeiger 
is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  purely  official  paper,  owned  by  the 
government  outright,  and  is  used  principally  for  formal  and 
less  sensational  government  news.  Imperial  decrees  and  declara- 
tions, the  awarding  of  orders  and  decorations,  etc.,  see  the  light 
first  in  the  Reichsanzeiger. 

Besides  papers,  however,  nurtured  wholly  or  in  part  with 
government  specie,  there  are  a  number  of  "  inspired "  and 
"semi  inspired''  moulders  of  public  opinion.  These  are  either 
regularly  or  occasionally  used  in  disseminating  news  which  the 
German  government  wishes  to  publish,  but  not  in  a  formal  way 
nor  assuming  responsibility  for  it.  Often  this  class  of  papers  is 
skilfully  employed  in  stretching  out  "feelers"  toward  other 
governments.  If  these  "feelets  '  meet  with  favourable  reception, 
and  the  Foreign  Office  in  Berlin  is  sure  of  its  ground,  the 
cautious  ''feelers"  are  followed  up  later  on  with  more  formal  and 
explicit  emanations  in  the  regular  organs  of  the  government.  If 
the  effect  did  not  meet  expectations,  the  matter  may  either  be 
dropped  for  good  or  temporarily,  or  else  it  may  be  kept  alive  by 
further  information  given  to  the  same  "inspired"  papers.  It 
would  lead  too  far  to  point  out  all  the  advantages  which  the 
government,  and  more  particularly  its  Foreign  Office  and 
diplomatic  service,  derives  from  this  whole  cautiously  manipu- 
lated system  of  guiding  and  shaping  public  opinion  and  influencing 


254  GERMANY 

foreign  governments,  but  it  will  suffice  to  say  that  its  uses  are, 
indeed,  manifold  and  undeniable.  However,  abuses  are  also 
very  liable  to  creep  into  it,  and  they  have  often  brought  it  about 
that  serious  mischief  was  done.  Now  and  then  the  delicate 
machinery  has  come  out  of  gear,  as  when  it  happened,  not  very 
long  ago,  that  while  one  set  of  "officieuse"  papers  was  attacking 
one  important  member  of  the  cabinet,  inspired  thereto  by  the 
Chancellor,  another  set,  by  the  clever  work  of  the  assailed  cabinet 
member's  friends,  published  simultaneous  justification  of  his 
alleged  offenses,  intermingled  with  a  few  poisonous  darts  intended 
for  the  Chancellor's  own  private  delectation.  One  of  the  most 
frequent  uses,  too,  to  which  the  "inspired"  press  is  put  is  to  call 
to  book  individual  foreign  correspondents  in  Berlin,  who,  for 
one  reason  or  other,  have  incurred  the  displeasure  of  the  German 
government,  or  of  one  or  more  members  of  the  cabinet,  or 
perhaps  of  the  Kaiser  personally.  Such  attacks  are  usually  pur- 
posely worded  in  an  oracular  style,  lending  itself  to  a  variety  of 
interpretations,  but  as  a  rule  sufficiently  theatening  to  cow  the 
correspondent  into  submission,  or  to  make  him  request  his  home 
office  to  send  a  successor. 

There  are  about  a  score  of  such  "inspired"  or  "semi-inspired" 
papers  printed  in  Germany  and  elsewhere,  and  the  rewards  for 
such  services  rendered  to  the  Foreign  Office  and  other  branches 
of  the  government  vary  in  kind.  Some  of  these  papers  and 
correspondents  consider  themselves  sufficiently  paid  by  being 
regularly  fed  with  more  or  less  important  and  accurate  news 
from  official  sources,  while  in  other  cases  the  quid  pro  quo  is  more 
tangible.  The  whole  matter  is  one  which  for  the  intelligent 
sojourner  in  Germany  is  full  of  interest,  and  certainly  illustrative 
of  certain  phases  of  public  life  there. 

As  on  every  other  sphere  of  public  life  in  Germany,  so,  too,  on 
the  press  of  that  country  has  the  impress  of  the  Kaiser's  mind 
and  influence  been  very  strong.  Bismarck,  as  the  world  knows, 
did  not  deal  gently  with  newspapers  and  newspaper  writers 
whom  he  could  at  all  control,  and  his  detractors  and  unwelcome 
critics  he  scourged  with  scorpions.  It  is  remembered  how  he, 
during  the  last  two  decades  of  his  official  omnipotence,  always 
carried  a  bundle  of  printed  slips  (containing  formal  charges)  in 
his  breast  pocket,  requiring  merely  the  insertion  of  the  name 


THE   PRESS  255 

of  the  offenders  and  of  the  paper  or  papers  in  which  the  offense 
had  been  committed.  These  slips  he  would  send  to  the  State's 
attorney,  often  several  in  the  course  of  a  day.  The  unlucky 
wight  who  had  thus  incurred  his  wrath  would  then,  a  few  days 
later,  receive  a  visit  from  the  bailiff,  informing  him  that  action 
had  been  begun  against  him  for  "offending  Bismarck,"  and  in 
due  course  of  time  a  trial  would  take  place  the  result  of  which 
was  a  foregone  conclusion,  and  by  which  he  was  consigned  to 
sequestration  for  terms  varying  between  a  few  weeks  and  one 
or  two  years.  It  was  one  of  Bismarck's  peculiar  ways. 

But  in  this,  as  in  some  other  features  of  a  character  that  knew 
no  will  but  his  own,  he  has  been  outdone  by  the  present  Kaiser. 
During  the  fourteen  years  of  his  reign  some  six  thousand  press 
offenders  in  round  numbers  have  been  hauled  before  German 
courts,  and,  with  few  exceptions,  sentenced  to  terms  in  jail  for 
having  found  fault  with  some  of  the  imperial  antics,  for  applying 
harsh  terms  to  him,  or  for  calmly  and  fairly  criticizing  his  public 
actions.  This  in  most  cases  has  been  called  by  the  subservient 
judges  adjudicating  in  such  cases  by  the  flexible  name  of  Use 
majeste,  a  term  whose  exact  definition,  under  the  present 
practice  of  the  German  courts,  is  an  impossibility,  for  the  inter- 
pretation put  upon  it  by  the  judges  themselves  has  varied  in 
hundreds  of  instances.  The  German  press  is  now  almost  as 
effectually  muzzled  as  is  that  of  Russia. 

This  is  a  matter  which  has  been  ventilated  for  years  in  the 
Reichstag,  the  only  place  remaining  in  Germany  where  the 
official  and  public  acts  of  the  Kaiser  may  be  discussed  pro  and 
con,  though  within  rather  narrow  limits,  without  drawing  upon 
the  heads  of  the  disputants  judicial  thunderbolts.  It  has  there 
been  pointed  out  to  the  apologists  of  the  Kaiser  that  the  latter 
at  no  time  scruples  to  criticize,  however  severely,  the  actions  and 
words  of  any  of  his  subjects,  and  of  whole  classes  of  the  population ; 
that  he  has  not  hesitated  to  publicly  brand  with  ignominious 
names  political  parties  or  men  who  were  opposing  him  in  any 
of  his  pet  measures  or  ideas ;  and  that  it  was  both  unfair  and 
contrary  to  the  spirit  and  the  wording  of  the  constitution  to  deny 
to  them  in  turn  the  right  of  defending  themselves  against  these 
aspersions.  It  has  been  pointed  that  in  not  a  single  instance 
has  the  Kaiser  pardoned  any  of  these  convicted  press  offenders, 


256  GERMANY 

nor  even  shortened  their  sentences  by  a  single  day,  although 
exercising  his  pardoning  prerogatives  very  generally  and  exten- 
sively in  favour  of  officials  and  non-officials  sentenced  for  exceeding 
their  authority,  for  dueling,  for  brutally  maltreating  their  subordi- 
nates, and  for  many  other  crimes  of  a  similar  nature.  But  the 
Kaiser's  champions  in  the  Reichstag,  while  unable  to  gainsay 
these  facts,  have  always  carried  the  day  in  that  body,  squelching 
such  criticism  with  the  sole  argument  that  the  monarch  is  a 
privileged  person  and  can  do  no  wrong,  and  that  it  is  under  all 
circumstances  needful  to  maintain  the  authority  of  the  monarch. 
The  courts  have  concretely  embodied  the  same  train  of  reasoning 
by  their  sentences,  and  have  steadily  become  more  and  more 
hostile  to  the  press.  The  highest  court  of  the  empire,  the 
Imperial  Court  in  Leipzig,  has  especially  distinguished  itself  in 
this  respect.  The  members  of  this  tribunal,  as  those  of  the  lower 
courts,  are  appointed  by  the  Kaiser,  and  this  fact,  of  course,  goes 
a  great  way  in  explaining  things.  Yet  even  in  that  body  there 
have  been,  and  are,  men  who  could  not  find  it  within  their  con- 
science to  thus  habitually  aid  in  overriding  the  constitution  of 
the  empire.  One  of  these  chief  judges  possessed  enough  of  the 
old-time  sturdy  German  independence  to  rather  resign  his  life- 
long, lucrative  and  honoured  office  than  remain  impotent  to  sway 
his  colleagues  longer  in  such  a  tribunal.  He  went  into  retire- 
ment and  comparative  poverty,  and  was  bold  enough  to  publish 
in  a  liberal  magazine  the  reasons  which  determined  him  in 
retiring.  But,  unfortunately  for  Germany's  bench,  his  example 
has  not  found  many  followers,  and  the  practice  of  the  courts  has 
since  then  become  even  more  illiberal. 

It  is  no  wonder  that,  with  such  powerful  influences  inces- 
santly at  work  all  over  the  empire,  the  German  press,  viewed  as 
a  whole,  has  lost  more  and  more  that  virile  spirit,  that  "eternal 
vigilance,"  which  is  the  price  of  liberty,  and  that  in  its  treatment 
of  domestic  conditions  it  has  become  timid  and  cautious  to  a 
degree.  These  unpleasant  conditions  have  also  done  much  to 
lower  the  German  journalist  in  the  popular  estimation  of  his  own 
country.  The  privileged  classes  especially  regard  him  with  a 
certain  contempt  and  dislike.  In  what  light  the  Kaiser  himself 
sees  the  German  newspaper  man  has  been  put  on  record 
repeatedly  by  men  of  his  immediate  entourage.  But  it  is  also 


THE    PRESS  257 

constantly  illustrated  by  him  in  other  unmistakable  ways.  As  a 
class  the  publishers  and  editors  of  Germany  fare  worse  at  his 
hands  than  any  other  part  of  the  population.  Not  one  of  them 
has  ever  received  any  signal  sign  of  imperial  favour.  No  high 
title  and  no  high  decoration  has  been  bestowed  upon  any  of 
them,  not  even  upon  the  most  abjectly  cringing.  When,  in 
midwinter  of  every  year,  the  list  of  those  upon  whom  titles, 
decorations,  and  other  honours  have  been  bestowed  is  published, 
it  is  almost  always  found  that  among  the  eight  thousand  or  so, 
comprising  every  station  in  life,  there  is  not  a  single  professional 
newspaper  writer  or  publisher.  The  man  who  for  a  generation 
had  sold  his  soul  to  the  government  on  the  Norddeutsche 
Allgemeine  Zeitung,  got,  shortly  before  his  death,  the  ridiculous 
title  of  '  'Commissionsrath,"  a  handle  to  his  name  which  is  usually 
conferred  by  Prussian  royalty  upon  a  second-class  tradesman 
when  he  has  given  lavishly  towards  charities,  especially  those 
favoured  by  the  court.  It  fully  describes  the  man — Doctor 
Finder  was  his  name — when  I  mention  that  he  felt  proud  of  the 
title. 

Of  course,  with  such  press  conditions  it  is  not  astonishing  that 
German  parents  of  the  higher  classes  encourage  their  sons  in 
choosing  rather  any  other  profession  than  that  of  a  newspaper 
writer,  and  that  capitalists  as  a  rule  are  unwilling  to  risk  their 
money  in  a  business  which  offers  scant  profit  and  no  honours. 
Thus  it  is  that  very  few  men  of  acknowledged  reputation  are,  or 
have  been,  in  the  newspaper  profession  as  a  regular  calling.  No 
posts  of  honour  or  emolument  are  ever  offered  them  by  the 
government.  As  a  rule  the  German  newspapers  are  run  on  small 
capital,  and  do  not  yield  large  profits.  The  men  who  have  made 
writing  for  them  their  life  work  are  never  in  receipt  of  large 
salaries,  but  manage  to  pay  their  debts  by  writing  books,  or 
theatrical  plays,  etc.,  in  addition  to  their  regular  labours. 

It  is,  under  the  circumstances,  surprising  that  the  newspaper 
writers  of  Germany  are,  as  a  class,  men  of  good  or  even  excellent 
education,  many  of  them  having  passed  through  the  universities 
and  taken  their  degree.  They  are  also,  with  few  exceptions, 
men  of  integrity  and  of  kindly  disposition,  and  the  papers  are, 
almost  all  of  them,  clean  in  tone  and  free  from  unhealthy  sensa- 
tionalism. The  editorial  matter  in  the  better  papers  is  well 


GERMANY 

written  and  shows  a  large  and  varied  fund  of  information,  and 
the  criticisms  on  music,  the  drama,  art  and  literature  are  nearly 
always  by  men  who  understand  their  subjects  thoroughly.  The 
reporter  alone  is,  as  a  rule,  the  distinct  inferior  of  his  American 
confrere,  both  as  a  man  and  as  a  newspaper  worker.  In 
Germany  the  reporter  is  still,  as  in  England,  a  mere  scavenger 
of  news,  with  whom  it  is  best  to  remain  on  distant  terms.  His 
field  of  labour  is  a  much  narrower  one  than  here,  and  whole 
domains  of  news  are  either  slighted  or  entirely  neglected  by  him. 
A  certain  standing  and  good  incomes  are  enjoyed  among  the 
German  reporters  only  by  those  who  regularly  attend  the  courts — 
i.  e.,  the  law  courts  and  the  court  of  the  sovereign  in  whose  capi- 
tal city  his  labours  are  performed.  The  latter  reports,  of  course, 
in  a  style  of  unvarying  enthusiasm,  the  splendid  fetes  and  other 
functions  and  diversions  given  by  "his"  particular  monarch, 
and  for  that  purpose  certain  narrowly  circumscribed  facilities 
are  vouchsafed  him.  The  Kaiser  and  the  other  sovereigns  of 
Germany  regard  this  branch  of  newspaper  work  as  the  most 
honourable  and  difficult  of  all,  and  to  testify  to  their  belief  it  is 
the  reporter  of  this  species,  whose  loyalty  is,  of  course,  above 
suspicion,  and  which  must  have  stood  many  previous  tests,  who 
in  some  cases  has  an  honourary  title  (that  of  "  Hofrath,"  or 
Court  Councillor),  conferred  upon  him  by  his  sovereign,  together 
with  an  occasional  medal  or  order  of  the  lower  designations. 
This  enables  him  to  appear  at  court  clad  in  the  customary  smalls 
and  pumps,  and  to  consort,  almost  on  terms  of  equality,  with  the 
royal  or  ducal  flunkeys,  who  will  regale  him  quite  affably  on 
the  backstairs  with  the  details  of  the  particular  form  of  dissipa- 
tion at  that  minute  indulged  in  by  his  betters  upstairs.  And  I 
don't  know  but  what,  with  the  peculiar  views  about  the  functions 
and  standing  of  journalism  held  in  the  empire,  public  opinion 
there  is  not  right  in  looking  upon  this  "court  reporter"  as  the 
only  member  of  that  despised  vocation  who  may  be  termed  at 
least  "fairly  respectable." 

The  periodicals  of  Germany  partake  in  a  general  way  of  the 
limits  and  qualifications  of  the  daily  press,  and  can  compare 
aeither  in  dignity  nor  intrinsic  worth,  and  still  less  in  influence 
or  circulation,  with  those  of  either  England  or  America.  With 
a  couple  of  exceptions  they  lead  a  struggling  existence.  The 


THE   PRESS  259 

tourist  might  make  an  extensive  trip  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  empire,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  he  would  not 
have  seen  a  single  copy  of  any  German  review,  nor  even  heard 
one  mentioned  in  conversation.  Even  in  the  bookstores  one  sees 
them  but  rarely,  and  as  for  quoting  them  in  legislative  or  other 
representative  bodies,  as  is  often  done  in  the  British  Parlia- 
ment, that  is  out  of  the  question.  German  reviews  do  not  sway 
the  German  mind  to  any  great  extent,  and  as  for  the  German 
government  or  the  voting  masses  at  a  general  election,  they 
usually  ignore  what  any  or  all  of  the  reviews  may  have  said  on 
the  questions  of  the  hour.  A  man  might  write  a  lifetime  for  the 
leading  reviews  and  not  become  known  outside  a  small  circle. 
All  this  at  first  blush  may  seem  strange,  but  the  fact,  after  all, 
is  easily  susceptible  of  explanation.  The  absence  of  a  free  press 
has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  it.  In  a  country  where  public 
measures  and  men  must  be  handled  gingerly  to  avoid  prosecu- 
tion and  incarceration,  the  air  is  not  favourable  to  the  growth  of 
periodical  publications  in  which  matters  may  be  treated  in  a 
trenchant,  outspoken,  forceful  manner.  The  further  fact  that 
in  political  education  the  average  German  is  even  at  this  day 
behind  the  other  leading  nations,  and  that  a  public  life,  in  the 
broader  sense,  does  not  exist  to  the  same  extent  in  Germany  as 
elsewhere,  also  counts  for  something.  Add  to  this  that  the  German 
reviews,  like  the  daily  papers,  are  run  on  small  capital,  and  yield 
small  financial  returns,  and  that  they  rely  (as  was  the  case  in 
England  eighty  or  ninety  years  ago)  exclusively  on  subscrip- 
tions and  hardly  at  all  on  advertising,  and  it  will  readily  be 
perceived  why  Germany  in  this  respect  has  remained  behind. 

The  leading  German  review,  though  by  no  means  the 
oldest,  is  the  Deutsche  Rundscliau,  founded  in  1874  by  Julius 
Rodenberg,  and  still  edited  by  him.  Rodenberg  possessed 
unusual  qualifications  for  a  venture  of  this  kind.  Born  seventy- 
one  years  ago,  he  early  showed  gifts  of  a  versatile  and  graceful 
writer,  and  extensive  travels  broadened  his  views,  brought  him 
in  contact  with  many  interesting  personages  and  gave  him  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  English  and  French  literature.  He 
did  much  good  literary  work  during  a  long  stay  in  England,  being 
then  and  for  many  years  after  on  terms  of  friendship  with 
Freiligrath,  the  refugee  German  poet  and  translator  of  English 


260  GERMANY 

poetry.  His  London  experiences  he  embodied  in  "Days  and 
Nights  in  London,"  and  trips  to  Ireland  and  Wales  produced  his 
"  Isle  of  Saints  "  and  "Autumn  in  Wales."  He  was  largely  instru- 
mental in  introducing  to  literary  Germany  romantic  Great 
Britain,  and  he  has  retained  a  great  love  of  English  literature. 
He  and  Fontane  rendered  into  German  many  of  the  old  border 
ballads,  up  to  then  quite  unknown  in  Germany.  After  he  had 
started,  in  a  modest  way,  the  Deutsche  Rundschau  in  Berlin,  he 
quickly  gathered  around  him  as  contributors  many  of  the 
best  writers,  such  as  Paul  Heyse,  Gottfried  Keller,  Theodor 
Storm,  C.  F.  Meyer,  Hermann  Grimm,  Wilhelm  Scherer,  Helm- 
holtz,  du  Bois-Reymond,  Haeckel,  Buechner,  and  discovered 
many  a  promising  talent,  such  as  Helene  Boehlau,  Anselm 
Heine  and  others,  and  this,  in  fact,  was  one  of  his  chief  merits, 
and  earned  him  the  lasting  gratitude  of  even  the  younger  genera- 
tion. His  model  had  been  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  and  in 
choice  of  subjects — literary,  artistic  and  scientific — many  of  his 
issues  will  compare  favourably  with  that  admirable  French  pub- 
lication. 

The  two  rivals  that  were  started  by  the  younger  talent  in 
Germany,  first  Die  Gesellschaft,  during  the  "storm  and  stress" 
period  of  the  eighties,  and  during  the  past  decade  the  Neue 
Deutsche  Rundschau,  although  brilliant  and  intensely  virile  at 
times,  lacked  a  number  of  the  essential  qualities  that  go  to  make 
up  a  uniformly  good  review.  Die  Gesellschaft,  at  first  edited  by 
M.  C.  Conrad  and  Carl  Bleibtreu,  and  for  five  or  six  years  the 
rallying  point  of  fine  writers  and  essayists  like  Wolzogen, 
Sudermann  and  others,  admitted,  for  the  sake  of  encouraging 
ambitious  but  extravagant  young  men,  much  that  was  crude, 
outre  and  risque,  and  under  its  present  editor,  Ludwig  Jacobowski, 
in  Dresden,  it  seems  to  be  trying  to  become  sedate  and  orderly, 
but  only  succeeds  in  being  dull.  The  short  career  of  the  Neue 
Deutsche  Rundschau  is  very  similar.  Its  chief  merit  seems  to 
have  been  its  championship  of  such  writers  as  Ibsen,  Hauptmann, 
etc.,  and  the  introduction  to  literary  Germany  of  some  of  the 
younger  and  most  talented  Scandinavian  poets  and  novelists. 

A  more  serious  rival  to  Rodenberg's  Deutsche  Rundschau  was, 
for  a  time,  Paul  Lindau's  Nord  und  Sued,  which  saw  the  light  in 
1878  in  Berlin.  For  six  or  seven  years  following,  this  publication 


THE    PRESS  261 

made  serious  inroads  upon  the  older  and  sedater  ones,  and  its 
staff  of  contributors  and  its  choice  and  variety  of  topics  outshone 
ten  years  ago  the  Rundschau.  It  was  primarily  owing  to  the 
character  of  Paul  Lindau  himself  that  Nord  und  Sued  enjoyed  but 
a  brief  succession  of  halcyon  days.  That  brilliant  feuilletonist 
had  earned  his  literary  spurs,  after  passing  through  the  German 
universities,  during  a  five  years'  stay  in  Paris,  and  had  imbibed 
some  of  the  most  charming  characteristics  as  well  as  worst  foibles 
of  his  Gallic  hosts.  After  a  number  of  years  passed  as  editor  of 
various  papers,  he  came  to  Berlin  in  1871,  and  quickly  achieved 
a  reputation  as  the  cleverest  journalist  there.  But  as  editor  of 
Nord  und  Sued  he  lacked  seriousness  of  purpose  and  steadiness  of 
character,  and  a  base  scandal  finally  put  an  end  to  his  Berlin 
career  and  drove  him  out  of  the  capital;  since  which  his  review, 
too,  has  steadily  declined. 

Older  than  either  of  these  publications,  and  still  following  the 
placid  tenor  of  its  way,  is  Die  Gegenwart.  This  was  started  in 
1872  in  Berlin  by  Theophil  Zolling.  Zolling,  a  graceful  and 
interesting  novelist  and  general  writer,  had  also  made  his  earlier 
reputation  in  Paris,  where  he  had  been  an  intimate  friend  of 
Alphonse  Daudet,  who  dedicated  one  of  his  best  tales  to  him. 
Die  Gegenwart  deals  not  alone  with  literature  and  art,  but  also 
with  politics,  social  studies  and  the  like  ;  it  is  bright  in  tone,  and 
really  deserves  a  larger  circle  of  readers  than  it  was  ever  able 
to  gather  under  its  wing,  owing  for  the  most  part  to  an  unenter- 
prising publisher. 

About  as  old  as  the  Deutsche  Rundschau,  and  of  the  same  gen- 
eral tendency,  is  the  Deutsche  Revue,  published  in  Stuttgart  and 
edited  by  Richard  Fleischer.  It  has,  though  now  in  its  twenty- 
seventh  year,  only  lately  come  to  the  front.  General  attention 
was  particularly  attracted  to  it  by  its  publication,  in  rapid  suc- 
cession, of  several  Bismarck  articles,  rather  sensational  in  their 
purport,  the  material  therefore  being  supplied,  as  generally 
surmised,  by  Prince  Herbert  Bismarck.  This  publication,  too, 
for  the  last  few  years,  has  made  a  specialty  of  weighty  contribu- 
tions by  leading  men  in  the  German  army  and  navy,  and  has 
assumed  a  rather  pronounced  nationalistic  and  patriotic  tone. 
Its  list  of  contributors  is  rather  extensive  and  cosmopolitan,  and 
includes  some  eminent  Frenchmen  and  Englishmen.  As  its 


262  GERMANY 

scope  became  broader,  and  its  taste  more  catholic,  its  circulation, 
too,  has  greatly  increased,  and  in  South  Germany,  at  least,  it  is 
decidedly  the  leading  review  to-day. 

A  new  review,  with  a  very  ambitious  programme,  was  started 
on  October  ist  last  in  Berlin,  by  Alexander  Duncker,  and  under 
the  editorship  of  Julius  Lohmeyer.  It  is  called  the  Deutsche 
Monatsschrift,  and  in  some  of  its  features  it  goes  beyond  what 
has  hitherto  been  attempted  in  Germany.  From  the  list  of  its 
contributors  for  the  first  year,  and  there  are  among  them  such 
names  as  Wilbrandt,  Jensen,  Stinde,  Felix  Dahn,  Detlev  von 
Liliencron,  Julius  Wolff,  Anton  von  Werner,  and  a  number  of 
historians,  social  economists,  and  men  of  action,  this  new  review 
will  rest  on  a  much  broader  basis  than  any  of  its  predecessors. 
It  will  make,  also,  a  specialty  of  colonial  and  political  matters, 
and  cater  to  the  tastes  of  the  Germans  residing  in  other 
countries.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  all  these  promises  will 
be  kept.  In  his  initial  announcement  the  editor  declares  it  to  be 
the  chief  aim  of  the  Deutsche  Monatsschrift  to  become  the 
radiating  point  for  Germany's  new  position  as  a  "  world  power, " 
politically  and  commercially,  and  part  of  its  mission  to  work 
for  the  idea  of  Pangermanism. 

There  has  been,  however,  for  a  number  of  years  past,  and  is 
still,  a  German  review,  Das  Echo,  published  specially  for  the 
millions  of  sons  of  Teutonland  scattered  all  over  the  world.  It 
has  been  measurably  successful  in  every  way,  and  has,  indeed, 
been  one  of  the  intellectual  ties  that  bind  the  expatriated 
Germans  and  their  progeny  to  the  old  home.  The  quality  of  it, 
though,  has  been  such  that  it  has  only  appealed  to  the  cultured 
few  and  not  to  the  masses  of  these  foreign  residents  of  German 
extraction. 

A  special  place  among  the  German  reviews  must  also  be 
awarded  the  Koloniale  Zeitschrift,  the  leading  organ  for  Germany's 
transoceanic  interests.  The  guiding  spirit  of  this  publication  is 
Gustav  Meinecke,  who,  after  a  residence  of  years  in  this  country, 
returned  to  Berlin  and  became  the  brainiest  and  most  far-sighted 
of  German  colonialists.  He  has  extensively  traveled  and  inves- 
tigated, with  shrewd,  practical  sense,  Germany's  possessions  in 
Africa,  and  he  is  in  close  touch  with  the  leaders  of  German 
thought  in  South  and  Central  America,  as  well  as  this  country 


THE    PRESS  263 

and  Australia.  His  publication  is  the  only  one  of  its  kind  which 
exerts  real  and  potent  influence  upon  Germany's  colonial  policy. 

The  oldest  of  German  political  reviews  is  Die  Grenzboten,  which 
was  started  in  1848,  and  which  for  a  couple  of  decades  did  much 
in  fashioning  and  influencing  liberal  German  and  Austrian 
thought  in  the  direction  of  accomplishing  the  political  unity  of 
Germany.  As  it  appeared  in  Leipzig,  a  city  which  then  as  now 
was  foremost  in  the  very  aims  this  publication  held,  and  away 
from  the  disturbing  influences  of  the  capitals  of  Prussia  and 
Austria,  it  was  allowed,  up  to  the  Franco-German  war  of  1870-7 1 , 
a  fair  measure  of  independence  and  freedom  of  expression.  Its 
palmiest  days  were  under  the  editorship  of  Gustav  Freytag,  the 
noted  novelist  and  liberal  publicist,  who  was  an  intimate  friend 
of  both  the  late  Emperor  Frederick  and  his  consort.  The  circu- 
lation and  the  influence  of  Die  Grenzboten  attained  at  that  time 
their  high-water  mark,  but  during  the  past  score  of  years  or  so 
it  has  steadily  declined,  and  its  dicta  and  counsels  are  no  longer 
considered  in  the  political  world  of  the  young  empire. 

The  Preussische  Jahrbuecher  (Prussian  Annals),  in  a  sense  the 
leading  political  review  of  Germany,  was  founded  ten  years  later, 
in  1858,  by  Rudolf  Haym,  who  presided  over  its  destinies  for 
six  years,  being  then  succeeded  by  Heinrich  von  Treitschke,  the 
celebrated  historian  of  Berlin  University.  For  many  years  the 
review  was  read  and  weighed  by  every  political  mind  in 
Germany,  and  Prof.  Hans  Delbrueck,  likewise  a  noted  historian 
and  teacher  in  the  university  of  the  German  capital,  who,  after 
a  number  of  years'  collaboration  in  editing  the  review,  finally 
succeeded  Treitschke  as  chief,  kept  its  helm  turned  in  the  same 
direction,  that  of  moderate  liberalism  and  a  greater  homogeneity 
of  national  political  life  in  internal  politics,  and  of  concentration 
and  enlightened  egotism  abroad.  But  as  times  went  on,  and 
men  and  methods  changed  in  high  places,  Delbrueck  was  grad- 
ually forced  to  abate  his  vigourous  style,  and  a  few  years  ago  he 
was  even  charged  with  lesc  tnajcste  and  convicted  by  a  prejudiced 
court,  for  having  expressed  himself,  it  was  said,  with  undue 
frankness  about  one  of  the  Kaiser's  bizarre  speeches.  With 
the  virility  thus  gradually  driven  out  of  the  columns  of  the 
Preussische  Jahrbuecher,  it  has  lost  most  of  its  former  prestige, 
and  is  now  but  the  shadow  of  its  former  self. 


264  GERMANY 

Die  Nation,  owned,  founded  and  edited  by  Theodor  Earth, 
exists  since  1888,  and  is  now  the  leading  exponent  of  German 
advanced  political  thought.  It  was  due  to  Bismarck's  attempts 
to  kill  politically  this  very  inconvenient  free-trader  and  liberal 
leader  of  Bremen  that  Doctor  Barth,  a  man  of  independent  wealth 
and  fine  social  position,  came  to  Berlin  and  there  founded,  in 
the  teeth  of  the  autocratic  Chancellor,  his  review.  In  its  suc- 
cessful conduct  Doctor  Barth  has,  in  its  political  features,  con- 
sistently advocated  a  policy  of  close  and  friendly  relations  both 
with  the  United  States  and  England,  and  in  the  art  and  literary 
columns  of  his  periodical  he  has  favoured  the  more  or  less 
revolutionary  new  exponents — the  "secessionists" — without, 
however,  tabooing  older  merit.  The  matter  to  be  found  in  Die 
Nation  is  always  original  and  frequently  "path-breaking,"  and 
much  attention  is  given  to  the  political,  literary  and  artistic 
life  in  Belgium,  Holland  and  the  Scandinavian  North.  While 
Ludwig  Bamberger  was  still  alive,  this  brilliant  essayist  and 
financier  contributed  much  excellent  matter  to  Die  Nation,  but 
he  has  found  a  worthy  successor  in  Dr.  Paul  Nathan,  who 
furnishes  political  comment  of  first  importance. 

An  Ishmael,  with  its  hands  raised  against  everybody's  and 
everybody's  against  its,  is  Maximilian  Harden's  Die  Zukunft, 
the  youngest  but  for  a  time  at  least  the  most  vigourous  and 
impressive  of  German  political  reviews.  Harden  is  only  forty, 
and  his  publication  exists  but  since  1892,  two  years  after 
Bismarck's  enforced  retirement,  but  when  this  brilliant  young  man 
began  to  publish  his  handy  and  novel  review,  everybody  bought 
it — a  thing  almost  unprecedented  in  Germany — and  Die  Zukunft 
became  an  immediate  financial  and  literary  success  from 
its  first  number — all  due  to  the  sensational  and  decidedly  clever 
series  of  slashing  and  bitterly  anti-Kaiser  essays  published  under 
the  diaphanous  nom  de  guerre  "Apostata."  It  is  quite  safe  to 
say  that  Harden  would  not  have  become  such  a  heated  cham- 
pion of  Bismarck  if  that  grim  old  person  had  still  been  in  office, 
but  as  it  was  he  made  himself  until  and  even  after  Bismarck's 
death  the  powerful  spokesman  for  the  latter's  resentment 
against  the  young  monarch  and  for  the  nation's  indignation  at 
the  manner  of  the  old  statesman's  withdrawal.  And  it  was  this 
happy  vein  which  Harden  worked,  with  great  pecuniary  and 


THE    PRESS  265 

literary  profit  to  himself,  for  about  eight  long  years.  Then, 
with  that  failing  him,  and  after  a  number  of  convictions  for  lese 
majeste,  entailing  many  dull  months  in  musty  old  fortresses  by 
the  Baltic,  Harden  changed  his  cue  and  modified  his  language, 
all  of  which  has  lost  him  his  popularity  and  his  dash.  Die 
Zukunft  is  on  the  down  grade.  Harden  has  done  a  deal  in 
changing  the  taste  of  readers  and  of  current  political  thought. 
He  abolished  the  anonymous  contributor,  and  forced  everybody 
to  fight  with  open  visor,  and  he  acted  like  a  leaven  in  the 
periodical  literature  of  Germany.  He  championed  with  zeal 
and  success  many  a  good  cause.  The  so-called  Free  Stage  in 
Berlin  was  virtually  his  creation. 

Thus,  looking  backward  upon  the  relatively  brief  past  of 
German  reviews  and  reviewers,  there  is  much,  too  muck,  that 
seems  to  call  for  criticism,  but  there  is  also  much  that  deserves 
praise — above  all,  the  uniform  honesty  of  purpose  and  of 
methods,  the  cleanly  and  wholesome  tone  pervading  these 
German  periodicals.  And  there  are  now  many  signs  that  predict 
greater  strength  and  greater  influence  for  the  review  in  Germany. 


LITERATURE    AND    ART 

GERMANY  is  now  experiencing  the  effects  of  a  most  important 
movement  in  her  art  and  literature.  It  is  a  movement  almost 
amounting  to  a  revolution,  to  an  upsetting  of  old  ideals  and  aims. 
It  is  strongly  iconoclastic  in  its  nature  and  destructive  in  its 
tendencies;  yet  it  is  not  merely  negative,  but  constructive  as 
well. 

In  art  this  movement  was  mainly  set  afoot  by  Arnold  Boecklin 
and  his  school  of  disciples.  In  literature  it  was,  and  is  still, 
headed  by  Sudermann  and  Hauptmann.  They  and  their 
followers  have  been,  especially  in  their  earlier  stages  of 
development,  strongly  influenced  by  Ibsen  and  Tolstoi.  The 
hopeless  pessimism  of  the  one  and  the  ascetic  mysticism  of  the 
other  tinged  their  first  work  very  perceptibly.  Sudermann's 
"Sodom's  Ende"  was  frankly  despairing  in  tone.  His 
"  Heimath"(the  "  Magda"  of  the  English  and  American  stage)  is 
Ibsen  through  and  through,  a  sort  of  Germanized  "  Doll's  House," 
differing  from  the  original  only  in  the  degree  of  its  pessimism. 
The  same  author's  "Die  Ehre,"  whose  magnificent  technique 
and  powerful  climaxes  have  secured  for  it  an  assured  place  on  the 
repertory  of  every  German  theatre  even  to-day,  is  as  extrava- 
gant in  its  ethical  tenets  as  anything  Ibsen  or  Tolstoi  ever 
wrote.  It  is  similar  with  Hauptmann's  initial  dramatic  efforts. 
"  Einsame  Menschen  "  breathes  the  spirit  of  Tolstoi  in  its  morose- 
ness  and  in  its  condemnation  of  sensualism;  and  "Die  Weber," 
though,  perhaps,  in  a  certain  sense  the  most  vital  play  of  the  last 
two  decades  written  in  any  tongue,  shows  plainly  the  warring 
influences  of  Ibsen's  "Pillars  of  Society"  and  Tolstoi's  "Anna 
Karenina."  In  "  Hannele's  Himmelfahrt"  (here  given  under 
the  abbreviated  title  of  "Hannele"),  than  which  no  more 
pathetic  play  has  been  written  for  an  age,  the  Russian  master's 
peculiar  vein  of  spirituality  runs  strong  Since  Schiller's 

266 


LITERATURE   AND   ART  267 

"Robbers"  appeared,  late  in  the  eighteenth  century,  no  drama 
has  moved  all  classes  of  German  society  as  deeply  as  have  these 
two.  I  distinctly  remember  a  performance  of  "Hannele"  in 
the  Deutsches  Theatre  in  Berlin,  the  place  where  the  dramas 
of  these  German  dioscures  have  been  made  a  special  cult  of, 
where  their  proper  mise-en-scene  has  been  attended  to  with  a 
reverent  regard  for  the  poet's  intentions,  and  where  the  spirit 
of  their  conceptions  has  been  nurtured  most  carefully.  The 
performance  was,  therefore,  flawless;  nay,  more,  it  was  imbued 
throughout  with  a  sentiment  rarely  seen  on  any  secular  stage — 
as  pious  as  that  evinced  by  the  peasant  actors  of  Oberammergau. 
But  the  effect  it  produced  on  the  audience,  an  audience  repre- 
senting the  -fine  fleur  of  Berlin's  intellectual  elite,  was  even  more 
startling.  Breathless,  tense,  stirred  to  the  very  fibre  of  their 
being,  this  mass  of  cultured  and  critical  men  and  women  hung  on 
the  very  lips  of  the  actors.  During  the  last  act,  when  the  poor 
waif  who  forms  the  central  figure  in  the  play,  sees  in  the  delirium 
of  her  dying  hours  the  embodiment  of  all  her  childish  longings 
and  vagaries,  the  effect  rose  to  even  a  higher  pitch.  This  mass 
of  cultured  cynics  was  sobbing.  Tears  spurted  from  the  eyes  of 
men  who  had  believed  themselves  callous.  And  when  the  curtain 
rang  down,  slowly  and  noiselessly,  shutting  out  bit  by  bit  that 
quaintly  pathetic  scene  of  the  deathbed,  the  illusion  that  had 
been  produced  assimilated  the  reality  so  closely  that  the  whole 
audience  sat  spellbound,  completely  hushed,  for  another  five 
minutes  in  the  darkened  house,  before  any  one  of  them  found  it 
possible  to  tear  asunder  those  tendrils  of  sentiment  binding  the 
beholder  to  the  stage.  When  they  broke  up,  they  left  the  house 
as  after  a  mighty  penitential  sermon. 

Dramatic  productions  that  achieve  such  results  mean  much 
in  the  mental  and  moral  development  of  a  nation.  They  mould 
thought  and  sentiment  alike,  and  generate  new  impulses,  or  give 
new  currents  to  old  ones.  And  as  I  remarked  before,  this 
influence  has  been  wrought  upon  every  class  of  the  population, 
high  and  low  alike.  The  labouring  classes  in  Germany,  in  their 
social  clubs  and  societies,  drilled  amateur  companies  to  perform 
these  striking  plays  of  Hauptmann  and  Sudermann,  and  on  the 
street  corners  one  could  see  groups  of  passers-by  eagerly  dis- 
cussing the  merits  and  demerits  of  a  new  play,  after  its  initial 


268  GERMANY 

performance,  a  thing  not  out  of  the  ordinary  in  Milan,  but 
certainly  phenomenal  in  Germany,  where  the  average  mind  is 
slow  to  respond  to  the  fancies  and  creations  of  the  poet.  In  fine, 
the  soul  of  the  nation  has  been  stirred  to  its  depths  by  the 
dramas  of  this  new  school. 

And  while  in  prose  literature  and  in  lyrics  this  new  movement 
has  not  quite  kept  step  with  its  evolution  in  drama,  there  have 
also  appeared  many  works  of  unusual  merit,  but  above  all 
showing  originality  in  both  conception  and  treatment.  Outside 
of  Germany,  for  instance,  Sudermann  is  scarcely  known  as  a 
novelist.  But  his  "Katzensteg"  is  a  powerful  piece  of  writing.  His 
"lolanthe,"  a  novelette  of  simple  plot,  is  as  unique  and  impres- 
sive as  anything  Maupassant  ever  wrote,  and  leaving,  besides,  a 
delicious  flavour  in  one's  memory.  His  "Frau  Sorge"  ranks  with 
the  best  fiction  lately  produced  in  any  language.  Conrad 
Telmann's  "Unter'm  Strohdach"  is  as  touching  and  true  a  picture 
of  rustic  misery,  and  shows,  besides,  much  more  energy  of  action 
than  Zola's  "La  Terre."  Many  of  Wolzogen's  short  stories  are 
as  perfect  bits  of  literary  workmanship  as  anything  in  that  line 
extant,  either  in  English  or  French.  His  East  Prussian  story, 
"Ihr  Einbrecher,"  is,  for  instance,  a  gem  of  quaint  humour  and 
dainty  sentiment.  Bierbaum's  "Pancrazius  Graunzer"  is  the 
equal  of  Jean  Paul's  quaint  and  fanciful  novels.  Max  Kretzer's 
"Das  Gesicht  Christi"  and  "Die  Genossen"  are  powerful  and 
true  in  realistic  sentiment.  Heinz  Tovote's  "Die  Geliebte"  is  a 
masterpiece  of  erotic  writing.  Arthur  Zapp's  "Das  Eiserne 
Zeitalter"  is  the  strongest  arraignment  of  militarism  which 
exists  in  fiction.  And  there  are  scores  of  other  works  that  could 
be  cited  from  among  Germany's  literary  output  of  late.  But 
enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  this  literary  reawakening  of 
Germany  has  by  no  means  been  confined  to  the  drama. 

Born  in  an  age  of  unrest,  and  of  strong  currents  and  counter- 
currents  in  the  public  life  of  the  young  empire,  the  keynote  to 
this  latest  school  of  literature  is  an  aggressive  frankness,  some- 
times almost  amounting  to  brutality;  an  earnest  searching  after 
truth,  both  in  matter  and  in  expression,  and  a  groping  after 
new  vehicles  and  modes  of  such  expression.  As  the  fierce 
struggle  between  contending  interests  mirrors  itself  in  the  minds 
of  these  young  writers,  so,  too,  is  their  form  of  giving  voice  to  this 


LITERATURE    AND   ART  269 

tumult  of  feelings.  The  traditions  of  the  past  and  the  aims  and 
recognized  verities  of  the  present  struggle  with  each  other  in 
their  writings,  and  they  are  always  partisans,  often  fanatics  of 
conviction.  Tinted  with  the  pessimism  imbibed  from  Ibsen  and 
Tolstoi,  there  is  yet,  running  side  by  side  with  it  and  frequently 
dominating,  a  strong  assertiveness,  a  consciousness  of  unbroken, 
rugged  strength.  These  young  writers,  genuine  sons  of  regener- 
ated Germany,  by  no  means  despair  of  better  days,  and  their 
heroes  and  heroines — for  their  heroines  play  a  great  part — fight 
to  the  bitter  end.  Sudermann's  "Tejas"  is  as  much  a  fitting 
type  of  the  hard-dying  Goth  of  old,  as  Hartleben's  young 
lieutenant  in  "Der  Rosenmontag"  is  of  the  similarly  resolute 
German  of  to-day.  Both  show  a  trace  of  Nietzsche's  "Ueber- 
mensch,"  his  "Supra-Man,"  and  both  are  bound  to  "live  out 
their  lives,"  as  the  catch  phrase  coined  by  the  new  school  has  it. 

Yet  there  is  a  red  thread  of  gloom  and  of  disgust  with  existing 
conditions  interwoven  through  it  all.  Hauptmann's  "Sunken 
Bell"  is  typical  in  this  respect.  The  bellfounder  in  his  symbolical 
play  typifies  the  mental  attitude  of  the  thinking  German  of  these 
days.  And  the  fact  is  not  only  palpable  enough  to  the  close 
reader,  but  it  is  also  easily  explained.  For  in  no  other  civilized 
country  to-day  is  there  found  such  a  piling-up  of  contrasts  and 
contradictions,  such  a  ruthless  struggle  for  supremacy  among 
the  warring  interests  of  caste  and  calling.  But  this  highly 
abnormal  state  of  affairs  furnishes  precisely  the  potent  impetus 
which  brings  this  army  of  talented  writers  into  the  heat  of  the 
battle.  When  one  keeps  these  facts  in  mind,  the  intensity  of 
feeling  displayed  by  the  vast  majority  of  present  German  writers 
in  all  their  work  is  understood. 

Both  Sudermann  and  Hauptmann  fill  a  recognized  place  in  the 
world's  literature,  and  their  work,  while,  for  obvious  reasons- 
not  apprehended  in  its  full  meaning  outside  of  Germany,  is  being 
followed  with  interest  everywhere.  Of  the  two,  it  has  been  truly 
said  Sudermann  is  the  better  playwright  and  Hauptmann  the 
greater  poet.  The  latter's  work,  judged  merely  by  the  criterion 
of  stage  effect,  is  of  very  uneven  merit.  Some  of  his  plays,  in 
fact,  were  dismal  failures,  even  in  Germany,  where  there  exists 
a  large  and  enthusiastic  following  that  swear  by  him  blindly. 
His  "Florian  Geyer,"  for  example,  is  so  diffuse  and  so  devoid  of 


27o  GERMANY 

stage  effects  that  it  had  to  be  shelved  after  a  few  performances. 
His  "Schluck  und  Jau,"  a  grotesque  fantasia,  met  with  hardly 
better  success.  His  "Sunken  Bell"  can  only  be  appreciated  by 
a  Teuton  mind,  so  full  is  it  of  dreamy  "nature  philosophy." 
But  everything  he  has  ever  given  to  the  world  has  been  real 
poesy,  strangely  intermingled  and  overlaid  with  realism.  In 
each  one  of  his  plays  he  attempts  to  solve  a  problem,  usually  a 
social  one,  which  confronts  the  student  of  German  life  at  every 
step.  In  some  cases  it  has  been  an  individual  problem  as  well, 
as  in  his  "College  Crampton."  There  are  many  crudities  of 
language  and  construction  in  his  plays,  enough,  in  fact,  to  con- 
demn most  of  them  in  the  eyes  of  the  everyday  theatrical 
manager.  But  there  are  sublime  passages  in  nearly  all  of  them, 
and  the  serious,  deep  thought  behind  it  all,  and  the  unaffected 
human  feeling,  far  outweigh  these  defects  in  the  mind  of  those  who 
seek  more  than  mere  amusement  in  a  stage  production.  He  has 
true  democratic  feeling,  in  thebest  sense  of  the  word,  and  his  plays 
not  only  stimulate  reflection  but  also  heighten  human  sympathy. 
It  is  but  necessary  to  watch  a  German  audience  during  the  per- 
formance of  one  of  his  pieces  to  become  convinced  of  that  fact. 
Sudermann's  work  is  more  in  accord  with  the  accepted  technique 
of  the  drama,  and  the  construction  of  most  of  his  plays  rivals 
Sardou's  in  pith  and  point.  Withal,  he  infuses  a  great  deal  of 
genuine  poetry  into  his  dramas.  His  "Johannes"  (John  the 
Baptist)  stands  preeminent  in  that  regard.  There  are  serious 
flaws  in  this  piece  of  work,  but  the  grand  and  simple  figure  of 
John  himself  is  wonderfully  conceived.  Both  Sudermann  and 
Hauptmann  have  barely  reached  the  meridian  of  life,  and  much 
more  than  they  have  thus  far  achieved  may  be  expected  of  them. 
But  there  are  other  talented  dramatists  of  the  new  school, 
men  whom  the  larger  fame  of  Sudermann  and  Hauptmann  has 
overshadowed  in  the  estimation  of  men  outside  of  Germany, 
but  whose  merits  are  fully  understood  there.  Ludwig  Fulda  is 
of  this  number.  The  best  known  of  his  plays,  "The  Talisman," 
is  a  satire,  said  to  be  meant  for  the  special  benefit  of  the  Kaiser, 
as  another  play,  by  Felix  Philippi,  was  generally  interpreted  as 
portraying  the  struggle  between  the  Kaiser  and  Bismarck,  and 
ending  with  the  latter 's  downfall.  It  is  in  blank  verse,  and 
of  an  elegance  of  diction  rather  unusual  in  German  literature. 


It  undoubtedly  ridicules  the  godlike  pretensions  of  royalty,  but 
probably  is  nothing  but  what  it  pretends  to  be — a  satire  on  the 
moral  blindness  of  many  crowned  heads,  and  on  the  servility 
displayed  by  courtiers.  Max  Dreyer,  several  of  whose  plays  have 
been  performed  in  this  country,  shows  a  stronger  virility  in  his 
work.  His  "Der  Probecandidat,"  in  which  the  strife  between 
hard-and-fast  orthodoxy,  as  a  handmaid  of  the  State,  and  the 
spirit  of  untrammeled  scientific  research,  as  it  is  still  fought 
to-day  in  German  schools,  is  portrayed,  met  with  wide  acclaim. 
Richard  Voss  has  written  several  plays  that  are  keyed  in  the 
spirit  of  protest  against  prevailing  caste  prejudices,  and  which 
are  powerful  as  stage  productions  as  well.  Paul  Hirschfeld's 
"Die  Mutter"  showed  decided  talent  and  living  force  for  so  young 
an  author.  The  most  talented,  though,  of  these  young  writers 
is  Max  Halbe.  All  of  his  plays,  like  those  of  Hauptmann,  fight 
for  some  principle.  His  tragedy,  "Jugend,"  a  fascinating 
though  depressing  tale  of  boyish  love  heedlessly  rushing  into 
sin  and  disaster,  and  in  which  the  figure  of  a  young  priest  is  most 
lifelike  and  striking,  had  a  sensational  success  all  over  Germany, 
and  some  theatres  played  it  to  crowded  houses  for  hundreds  of 
nights.  A  later  play,  "Mutter  Erde,"  leads  into  the  very  midst 
of  one  of  the  great  struggles  that  divide  Germany  into  two 
hostile  camps,  the  struggle  between  the  traditions  of  the  past 
and  the  ideals  of  the  future. 

The  dramas  of  this  new  school  of  German  literature  have  all 
this  one  characteristic  in  common:  They  protest  against  the 
continuance  of  present  social  and  political  conditions;  they 
deprecate  the  prejudices  still  rampant  in  the  ruling  classes,  and 
demand  greater  freedom  for  the  individual  as  against  the 
authority  of  government,  caste,  orthodoxy,  and  royalty.  A 
similar  vein  is  also  running  through  the  lyrical  productions  of 
these  standard  bearers  in  a  new  storm-and-stress  period.  The 
ablest  and  most  original  of  these  champions  of  the  future  is 
Baron  Detlev  von  Liliencron.  He  is,  too,  the  most  versatile. 
His  poems  have  a  charm  all  their  own.  Many  of  them  are  in 
meter  hitherto  unattempted  in  German,  and  have  a  rhythm  of 
peculiar  swing.  So  strong  a  hold  has  this  poet  on  the  affections 
and  on  the  imagination  of  the  younger  generation  that,  some 
time  ago,  a  national  subscription  was  secured  from  his  admirers, 


272  GERMANY 

and  the  result,  amounting  to  a  goodly  sum,  presented  to  the 
suffering  and  impecunious  bard — an  event  almost  unprecedented 
in  German  literature.  Ernst  von  Wolzogen,  a  direct  descendant 
of  the  father  of  Schiller's  wife,  is  as  unique  in  his  way.  His 
verse  is  always  graceful  and  full  of  point,  just  as  his  prose  is,  and 
in  the  choice  and  treatment  of  his  themes  he  is  very  daring.  He 
was  one  of  the  originators  of  the  Berlin  "Free  Stage,"  where  all 
bold  plays,  tabooed  everywhere  else,  are  welcome,  and  started 
the  first  "Ueberbrettl,"  modeled  to  a  certain  extent  on  the 
homes  of  the  chansonniers  in  Paris,  in  Germany.  Richard 
Dvihmel,  Johannes  Schlaf,  Arno  Holz,  O.  J.  Bierbaum,  Otto 
Erich  Hartleben,  Rudolf  Baumbach,  Frank  Wedekind  and 
Heinrich  Seidel  are  all  lyrical  poets  of  peculiar  gifts  and  disciples 
of  the  new  school.  Seidel's  poems  glorify  in  an  altogether 
new  vein  the  philistine  of  these  latter  days,  and  Baumbach 's 
"Tramp  Songs"  are,  of  their  kind,  inimitable,  though  often 
reckless  and  rollicking. 

In  art  it  was  Arnold  Boecklin,  Swiss  by  birth  but  German  by 
adoption,  who  set  the  pace  for  his  whole  tribe  of  followers.  It 
was  his  inspiration  and  the  profound  impression  made  by  his 
matchless  canvases  upon  the  young  generation  of  German  painters 
everywhere,  which  induced  the  younger  German  art  to  cut 
completely  loose  from  the  leading-strings  of  the  various  orthodox 
schools  cultivated,  respectively,  in  Munich,  Dusseldorf,  Berlin, 
Dresden  and  Carlsruhe.  For  fifty  years  German  art  had 
degenerated  more  and  more  into  mannerism.  Individual  good 
work  was  being  done  by  a  dozen  men  or  more,  like  Knaus,  Meyer 
von  Bremen,  Defregger,  Werner,  the  Achenbachs  and  others, 
but,  viewed  as  a  whole,  German  painting  had  ossified  and  become 
tame  and  uninspiring.  This  was  true  not  only  of  its  spirit  and 
of  its  choice  of  subjects,  but  also  of  its  technique,  the  famous 
"brown  sauce"  in  which  it  reveled  covering  a  multitude  of  sins 
of  commission  and  omission.  But  as  in  literature,  a  fever  of 
unrest  seized  upon  the  young  men,  and  deep  dissatisfaction  with 
prevailing  methods.  Then  suddenly  arose,  like  a  brilliant 
meteor,  Boecklin  on  the  horizon.  Since  the  days  of  Durer  and 
Holbein,  no  painter  has  lived  who  embodied  so  completely  and 
strikingly  the  Germanic  idea  in  art  as  this  man  from  Basle  did. 
His  creative  genius  was  sublime,  and  his  work  always  earnest, 


LITERATURE   AND   ART  273 

thorough,  full  of  originality.  His  "Island  of  the  Dead,"  perhaps 
his  greatest,  and  one  of  his  somberest  and  thought-inspiring 
works,  won  the  day  for  him.  The  young  generation  of  painters 
in  Germany  took  pattern  by  him.  He  became  their  great 
teacher.  He  taught  them,  more  or  less  perfectly,  those 
qualities  in  which  he  stands  unrivaled  in  German  art,  and  in 
some  of  which  he  has  not  his  equal  in  the  art  of  any  country 
— boldness  and  originality  of  conception;  vivid  sense  of  colour; 
harmoniousness  and  compactness  of  grouping;  the  luminous 
charm  of  light  and  the  grand  effects  of  shade;  and,  above  all, 
that  boldness  of  imagination  and  of  execution  which  constitutes 
the  chief  value,  as  an  educational  factor,  of  his  paintings.  With 
him  as  a  sure  guide,  there  has  been  evolved  during  the  past  ten 
or  twelve  years  a  real  Germanic  art,  more  distinctive  even  than 
either  the  French,  the  Scotch-English,  or  the  Spanish.  It  is 
intensely  truthful  and  sincere,  this  newest  type  of  German  art, 
and  that  is  why  some  have  tacked  the  label:  Art  for  art's  sake  ! 
to  it.  Some  of  its  exponents  have  been  more  or  less  influenced 
by  French  technique,  and  plein-air  treatment,  symbolism,  and 
impressionism,  so-called,  have  found  their  admirers  for  a  time. 
But  the  intrinsic  Germanic  quality  of  the  work  done  by  the  men 
styled  "Secessionists,"  because  of  their  separation  from  the  old 
and  accepted  schools  of  painting  in  the  empire,  has  not  thereby 
been  affected.  Their  "realism"  has  remained  of  the  real  kind. 
Corinth,  for  instance,  a  young  Munich  painter,  exhibited  lately  a 
large  canvas,  "The  Daughter  of  Herodias,"  whose  realism  was 
so  palpable  as  to  create  a  shudder.  Slevogt,  another  one  of  these 
young  artists,  showed  a  triptych,  descriptive  of  the  parable  of  the 
Lost  Son,  which  is  amazing  in  its  lifelike  realism.  Liebermann's 
old  women  mending  Mechlin  lace  are  fairly  alive,  and  his  large 
picture  showing  an  invalid  Sailors'  Home  gives  us  the  naked 
truth.  All  this  art,  too,  is  Germanic  in  that  it  is  not  gay  nor 
sensual,  but  serious,  vigourous,  striving  for  truth. 

Two  Bavarians,  Franz  Lenbach  and  Franz  Stuck,  come  in  their 
own  way  perhaps  nearest  to  Boecklin,  but  each  of  them  is  a 
master,  and  each  shows  distinctive  characteristics  of  his  own. 
Stuck  loves,  like  Boecklin,  symbolism,  and  his  striking  paintings, 
"War"  and  "Nemesis,"  dwell  in  the  memory  forever.  Lenbach's 
portraits,  in  their  boldness  and  direct  simplicity,  and  in  their 


GERMANY 

giving  the  soul,  the  very  Ego,  of  the  original,  are  sufficiently 
well  known  in  this  country.  Several  of  his  Bismarck  portraits 
are  among  the  best  which  contemporaneous  art  has  furnished. 
Max  Liebermann  is  also  a  realist  of  great  individuality,  wonder- 
ful truth,  and  marvelous  technique,  besides  being  most  prolific. 
He  deserves  to  be  better  known  in  this  country.  So  does  Leibl, 
another  Bavarian,  who  combines  with  the  sure  brush  of  Defregger 
and  with  the  power  of  individualizing  each  figure  he  paints,  a 
freedom  of  conception  and  of  execution  which  might  be  looked 
for  in  vain  among  the  German  painters  of  the  old  schools.  Hans 
Thoma,  Kalckreuth,  Max  Koner,  Otto  Vogel,  Leistikow,  are  also 
leading  artists  of  this  new  type.  Max  Klinger  and  Joseph  Sat- 
tler  are  artists  standing  out  in  bold  relief  among  these  younger 
ones.  Klinger  is  perhaps  the  most  imaginative  and  impressive 
of  them  all.  He  excels  in  nearly  every  field — as  a  designer, 
etcher,  painter,  sculptor,  and  illustrator.  An  intense  virility 
distinguishes  all  his  work. 

This  whole  "Secessionist"  movement  in  German  art  has  had 
uphill  work,  of  course,  to  conquer  for  itself  the  place  of  promi- 
nence it  now  occupies.  With  all  the  old  schools  solidly  arrayed 
against  them;  with  their  opponents  holding  every  advantage 
and  every  important  office  of  emolument  and  influence  in  the 
art  world;  and  with  the  different  governments  all  over  the  em- 
pire, national,  State,  and  municipal,  withholding  patronage 
from  them,  and  discouraging  them  in  every  possible  way,  their 
fight  for  recognition  seemed,  indeed,  for  a  time,  quite  hopeless. 
But  there  was  one  great  ally  working  in  their  favour.  So  far 
as  it  was  unofficial,  enlightened  public  opinion  cordially  wel- 
comed the  new  men  in  the  arena.  Art-loving  circles  declared 
in  their  favour  in  ever-increasing  numbers.  The  press  and  peri- 
odical literature,  too,  gradually  was  won  over  to  their  side,  and 
where  official  patronage  continued,  and  continues  to  this  day, 
to  discriminate  against  them,  the  purses  and  the  sympathies 
of  wealthy  and  cultured  private  persons  were  opened  to  them, 
and  at  every  public  art  exhibition,  no  matter  where  held  in 
Germany,  the  paintings,  drawings,  etchings,  engravings,  illustra- 
tions, etc.,  of  representative  men  belonging  to  the  new  move- 
ment are  bought  very  largely.  The  fight  between  the  old  and 
the  new  culminated,  of  course,  in  the  art  centres  of  Germany. 


LITERATURE   AND   ART  275 

Both  in  Berlin,  where  Anton  von  Werner,  the  president  of 
the  Academy  of  Art,  and  the  artist  exercising  the  most  potent 
influence  with  both  Kaiser  and  government,  strenuously  opposed 
them,  and  in  Munich  the  "Secessionists"  were  finally  forced  to 
formally  separate  from  the  bodies  and  organizations  representing 
art  life.  They  had  to  arrange  for  special  expositions  of  their 
works,  and  these  expositions  have  become  during  the  last  few 
years  pronounced  social,  artistic  and  financial  successes. 

Against  the  new  men,  the  Kaiser,  too,  hurled  his  thunderbolts. 
Quite  recently  in  one  of  his  public  speeches  that  monarch  con- 
demned and  ridiculed  the  idea  of  "art  for  art's  sake"  and 
deprecated  the  aims  and  methods  of  the  new  school.  Similar 
utterances  by  him  were  reported  on  many  previous  occasions. 
To  discourage  them  he  has  called  in  foreign  artists  to  paint  his 
portraits  or  to  execute  other  special  orders,  such  as  the  Polish 
battle  painter,  Von  Kossak,  the  English  portraitist,  Herkomer, 
the  Hungarian,  Parlaghy,  and  others.  The  Kaiser  employed 
similar  tactics  in  discouraging  the  new  aspirations  in  sculpture. 
In  a  certain  sense  at  least  the  past  ten  years  has  been  a  Medicean 
age  for  German  sculptors.  The  Kaiser  gave  the  example,  by 
ordering  many  busts,  monuments,  bronzes  or  marble  groups,  etc., 
for  the  decoration  of  his  castles,  parks,  and  public  places,  and  he 
thus  set  the  fashion.  Orders  poured  in  from  every  city  and  town, 
small  and  large,  and  nearly  every  week  saw  the  dedication  of 
some  new  image  in  brass,  stone,  or  even  in  tinted  cast-iron  rising 
on  the  market  square  in  honour  of  the  defunct  William  I  and  of 
his  paladins — Bismarck,  Moltke,  Roon,  the  Crown  Prince,  or 
generals  that  had  individually  distinguished  themselves  in  the 
days  of  the  upraising  of  the  empire.  There  was  no  sculptor  of 
even  slight  talent  that  has  not  had  his  hands,  and  his  purse  as 
well,  full  these  years,  all  due  to  the  impetus  given  by  the  Kaiser. 
But  he  favoured  only  mediocrity,  and  would  have  no  deviation 
from  beaten  paths.  When  the  national  monument  to  William  I 
was  to  be  erected,  he  chose  from  the  plans  submitted  the  one  by 
Reinhold  Begas,  his  favourite,  and  from  the  sum  entirely  secured 
by  popular  subscription,  and  intended  to  pay  for  the  whole 
monument,  he  awarded,  again  on  his  sole  authority,  no  less  than 
1,500,000  marks,  or  about  $375,000,  to  Begas  as  an  honourary 
fee.  The  monument  as  it  now  stands,  facing  the  maiti  portal 


276  GERMANY 

of  the  old  Royal  Castle  in  Berlin,  is  as  inappropriate  for  the 
commemoration  of  a  simple-minded,  modest,  and  wholly 
unaffected  old  gentleman  as  William  I  unquestionably  was,  as 
anything  that  can  well  be  conceived.  But  it  was  to  the 
Emperor's  taste.  It  was  overloaded  with  allegorical  figures,  and 
it  showed  the  old  monarch  in  an  unnatural  posture  astride  of  a 
horse  led  by  the  genius  of  peace,  and  the  whole  was  flanked  by 
another  score  of  allegorical  or  symbolical  personages.  The 
German  people,  who  had  furnished  the  money  for  all  this,  were 
dissatisfied  with  this  theatrical  monument,  and  the  caustic 
tongue  of  Berlin  had  quickly  dubbed  it  by  another  allegorical 
allusion — "William  in  the  Lion's  Den"  they  call  it.  The 
Kaiser's  ancestral  gallery  in  marble,  for  which  he  personally 
gave  the  funds,  however,  and  which  is  now  erected  in  that  broad 
and  tree-lined  artery  of  the  Thiergarten  called  Sieges-Allee  (or 
Avenue  of  Victory),  is  another  striking  illustration  of  the 
exclusive  favour  bestowed  by  him  on  tame  mediocrity.  All  the 
models  for  these  thirty-six  groups  carved  from  finest  Carrara 
marble  were  approved  and,  to  some  extent,  suggested  by  him, 
and  the  sculptors  engaged  on  them  for  several  years,  Begas  and 
Herter,  Schaper  and  Eberlein,  Uphues  and  Ulrich,  etc.,  had  to 
strictly  conform  to  his  ideas.  The  effect  of  the  total  now  pro- 
duced is  that  of  monotony  and  insipidity,  though,  of  course,  the 
white  gleaming  marble  against  a  background  of  dark  foliage  is 
in  itself  very  pleasing.  This  hobby  cost  the  Kaiser  a  matter  of 
6,000,000  marks  out  of  his  own  pocket. 

The  Kaiser's  opposition,  though,  against  this  new  movement 
is  with  greatest  vigour  directed  at  the  literary  branch  of  it. 
The  Kaiser  scents,  and  quite  justly,  danger,  serious  danger,  in 
this  volcanic  upheaval  of  literary  life  in  Germany.  He  feels  that 
part  of  it  is  aimed  against  his  own  authority,  and  that  it  means 
the  shattering  of  many  traditional  idols,  royal  infallibility 
included.  It  impresses  him  as  a  disorderly,  as  a  revolutionary 
movement,  intended  to  throw  off  fetters  of  creed  and  thought 
which  he  deems  necessary  to  keep  his  people  in  subjection.  The 
satire  of  this  new  movement  has  not  halted  before  the  majesty 
of  his  own  person,  nor  before  that  of  his  ancestors.  Even  such  a 
mild  representative  of  the  new  movement  as  Ernst  von  Wilden- 
bruch  has,  in  his  historical  dramas,  "Der  Generaloberst,"  ''Die 


LITERATURE   AND   ART  277 

Quitzows,"  and  "Konig  Heinrich,"  said  many  things  which  to 
an  absolutist  in  theory  and  practice  like  the  Kaiser  must  seem 
illoyal,  and  it  was  because  of  this  that  he  forbade  the  per- 
formance of  "Der  Generaloberst "  in  Berlin  and  Prussia,  and 
would  not  permit  the  other  plays  named  to  be  given  in  the  royal 
theatres.  A  play  like  Gerhart  Hauptmann's  "Die  Weber"  acts 
on  him  like  a  red  rag.  He  deems  it  sacrilegious,  and  in  its  effect 
weakening  royal  authority  and  the  force  of  social  convention- 
alities. "Der  Biberpelz,"  a  gross  satire  on  existing  Prussian 
police  conditions  by  the  same  author,  confirmed  him  in  the 
opinion  that  Hauptmann  was  preaching  by  his  plays  a  dangerous 
doctrine.  Sudermann's  dramas  he  held  of  similar  import,  with 
their  railings  at  hypocrisy  in  high  places  and  their  disregard  of 
the  fables  convenues  of  modern  society.  The  work  of  the  other 
representative  men  in  this  new  movement,  what  he  saw  and 
heard  of  it,  only  tended  to  drive  the  conviction  of  its  harmfulness 
deeper  home  into  his  soul.  Ludwig  Fulda's  "Der  Talisman" 
he  read  in  the  manuscript,  and  he  considers  it  to  this  day  an 
impious  attack  on  himself,  all  the  more  reprehensible  because  so 
cautiously  worded  and  with  the  plot  so  astutely  wrought  as  to 
preclude  the  chance  of  legally  prohibiting  its  performance.  It  is 
said  that  Ludwig  Barnay,  the  Berlin  manager  and  actor,  and  a 
personal  enemy  of  Fulda's,  instilled  this  erroneous  idea  in  the 
Kaiser's  mind.  When  this  play,  nevertheless,  was  first  given  at 
the  Lessing  Theatre,  the  Kaiser,  to  mark  his  displeasure,  with- 
drew his  and  his  court's  patronage  from  the  house,  where  he  up 
to  that  time  had  a  large  box  always  reserved  for  him.  He  did  the 
same  thing  in  respect  to  the  Deutsches  Theatre,  after  "Die 
Weber"  had  seen  its  initial  performance  there.  Extreme 
caution  is  used  by  the  police  authorities — who  still  exercise  strict 
censorship  regarding  theatrical  performances  all  through  Prussia, 
as  well  as  to  the  variety  theatres,  and  as  to  songs,  etc.,  given 
at  other  places  of  entertainment — before  issuing  permits  to 
managers.  For  a  time  nearly  every  new  play  possessing  sensational 
features  was  read,  before  the  police  pronounced  judgment  on 
it,  by  the  Kaiser  and  his  entourage,  and  his  personal  judgment 
has  decided  the  fate  of  most  of  them.  Years  often  elapsed  before 
the  poor  author  was  able  to  learn  the  verdict.  I  remember  that  in 
the  case  of  a  talented  young  writer,  Heinrich  Lee  by  name,  some 


278  GERMANY 

twenty-eight  months  went  by  before  the  police  "passed"  his 
play.  It  was  a  historical  comedy,  and  the  long  hesitation  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  in  the  last  act  the  person  of  Frederick  the 
First,  one  of  the  Kaiser's  ancestors,  appeared  on  the  stage.  The 
official  censorship,  one  of  the  police  practices  which  is  in  direct 
conflict  with  the  Prussian  constitution,  has  been  strained  to  the 
utmost  tension,  and  has  for  years  been  a  thorn  in  the  sides  of 
both  managers  and  authors.  The  matter,  like  many  similar 
ones,  has  been  ventilated  in  both  the  Prussian  Diet  and  in  the 
Reichstag,  but  no  amelioration  of  conditions  has  been  effected. 

Thus  the  Kaiser  has  fought  the  new  movement  and  the  new 
men  in  German  literature  tooth  and  nail,  and  has  thrown  the 
enormous  weight  of  his  personal  influence  in  the  scale  against 
them.  On  numerous  occasions  he  has  branded  it  and  the  similar 
movement  in  art  as  "harmful"  and  "despicable."  A  striking 
illustration  of  the  lengths  to  which  he  is  willing  to  go  in  this 
respect  was  his  refusal  to  sanction  the  awarding  of  the  Schiller 
Prize  to  Hauptmann  for  his  "Sunken  Bell."  This  so-called 
Schiller  Prize,  awarded  every  few  years  by  a  body  of  the  leading 
men  in  literature  and  thought  in  Germany  to  the  one  writer  whose 
most  recent  work  is  considered  most  original, "path-breaking,  "and 
withal  of  the  highest  excellence,  was  given  twice  to  Hauptmann 
for  his  "Sunken  Bell."  The  Kaiser,  on  both  occasions,  annulled 
this  decision,  and  finally  gave  the  prize  to  Wildenbruch,  who, 
however,  was  honourable  and  independent  enough  to  send  half 
of  the  prize,  consisting  of  a  goodly  sum,  to  his  competitor, 
Hauptmann,  the  fact  being  applauded  by  nearly  every  paper  in 
Germany. 

In  opposition  to  the  new  movement  the  Kaiser  tried  his  hand 
in  originating  a  counter-movement.  He  laid  down  the  lines  for 
it  by  defining  what,  according  to  him,  was  commendable  litera- 
ture and  art.  He  encouraged  a  number  of  minor  writers  and 
dramatists  coming  up  to  his  ideas,  just  as  he  did  in  painting  and 
sculpture.  Thus  he  has  shown  more  or  less  favour  to  men  like 
Richard  Skowronnek,  Hans  von  Trotha,  Baron  Georg  von 
Ompteda,  Fedor  von  Zobeltitz,  Arthur  Fitger,  Felix  Dahn,  Ernst 
Wichert  and  others.  But  the  man  after  his  own  heart  he  has 
found  of  late  in  Joseph  Lauff,  a  retired  artillery  major.  To 
this  gentleman  he  imparted  his  ideas  concerning  a  series  of 


LITERATURE   AND   ART  279 

dramas  glorifying  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty.  He  collaborated 
with  him  on  the  first  two  of  these  plays.  He  had  them  mounted 
with  a  disregard  of  expenses — costumes  lavish  and  historically 
correct;  scenery  gorgeous ;  new  and  striking  stage  effects;  the 
best  obtainable  actors  and  actresses  in  the  leading  parts;  the 
crowds  of  people  represented  by  large  bodies  of  carefully  drilled 
soldiers ;  wreaths  of  fresh  roses  suspended  from  the  ceiling ;  silver 
trumpets  blowing  fanfares — and  so  forth.  At  the  initial  per- 
formance he  had  an  audience  composed  exclusively  of  his  guests 
and  courtiers.  And  still  the  plays  proved  rank  failures, 
unquestionably  so.  Both  at  the  royal  theatres  in  Berlin  and 
Wiesbaden  the  public  flatly  declined  to  see  these  intensely 
patriotic  but  as  decidedly  bombastic  and  inane  dramas,  to  the 
Kaiser's  intense  disgust,  while  they  nightly  flocked  in  dense 
crowds  to  hear  his  hated  rivals,  Hauptmann  and  Sudermann. 
It  was  a  galling  defeat  for  the  proud  autocrat. 

There  is  one  feature  of  this  new  movement,  however,  that  the 
Kaiser  is  in  sympathy  with,  and  that  is  interior  decoration. 
There  has  been  no  Morris  in  Germany,  and  no  Kensington  Art 
School,  but  the  Gewerbe  Museum,  in  Berlin,  founded  mainly 
through  the  influence  of  the  Empress  Frederick,  and  containing 
beautiful  collections  of  specimens  of  applied  art  and  of  artistic 
handiwork,  has  been  very  fruitful  in  its  stimulus  upon  interior 
decoration  in  Germany.  That  there  was,  and  is,  great  need  of  that 
nobody  can  doubt  who  has  studied  German  life  in  its  various 
phases.  The  lack  of  taste,  of  artistic  form  given  to  intrinsically 
valuable  material,  was  everywhere  apparent  in  the  German  home 
of  the  middle,  and,  of  course,  in  a  higher  degree,  in  that  of  the 
lower  classes.  The  rapidly  growing  wealth  made  this  fact  all  the 
more  apparent  and  unpalatable.  In  all  that  constitutes  interior 
decoration — in  furniture,  in  hangings  and  tapestries,  in  paint^ 
ings,  frames  and  nippes,  in  carpets  and  rugs,  in  ceramics  and 
tableware,  in  all  of  these  and  in  many  things  not  here  enumerated, 
the  German  interior  was,  up  to  a  few  years  ago,  the  distinct 
inferior  of  the  average  French,  English  or  American  home.  The 
disproportion  between  the  artistic  understanding  in  theory  and 
the  lack  of  concrete  expression  of  it  was  often  appalling  to  the 
observer.  But  with  the  reawakening  of  life  in  German  art  came 
also  a  strong  desire  to  remodel  the  German  interior  on  lines  more 


280  GERMANY 

in  accord  with  the  abundance  of  material  means  to  gratify  the 
sense  of  beauty  and  the  artistic  longing  of  the  person  of  education. 
Laymen  and  artists  jointly  strove  to  work  a  change  for  the  better. 
Almost  every  one  of  the  larger  expositions  in  Germany  during  the 
past  decade  contained  a  section  devoted  to  the  exhibition  of  fur- 
niture, and  of  a  vast  variety  of  objects  intended  for  home  decora- 
tion, and  the  effects  of  this  have  been  strongly  noticeable  of  late. 
Artists  and  critics  like  Prof.  Julius  Lessing,  Professor  Eberlein, 
Paul  Schlenther  and  others,  did  not  tire  in  teaching  the  gospel  of 
better  taste  and  greater  refinement  in  home  appointments  to  the 
cultured  public,  and  men  like  Klinger  and  Sattler  thought  it  not 
below  their  dignity  to  actively  further  this  movement.  By  a 
variety  of  means,  in  fact,  interior  decoration  became  an  integral 
part  of  the  new  German  art.  The  Grand  Duke  of  Hesse  grew  one 
of  the  chief  apostles  of  this  new  creed  of  reshaping  the  German 
home  on  artistic  lines.  He  spent  liberally  of  his  means  in  starting 
a  whole  colony  of  such  model  German  homes,  settled  entirely  by 
artists  whom  he  befriended,  and  who  built  their  houses  and 
decorated  them  inside  on  purely  artistic  ideas.  This  colony, 
perhaps  in  its  way  unique  in  the  world,  is  near  Darmstadt,  and 
last  year  it  gave  an  exhibition,  the  one  comprehensive  exhibit 
being  itself,  the  colony.  Harmoniousness  of  outline,  appro- 
priateness of  form  and  material,  and  just  apportionment  of  lights 
and  shadows  in  the  interior,  and  originality  of  conception  in  design 
and  workmanship,  always  guided  by  taste — these  were  the  things 
taught  those  who  visited  this  peculiar  exposition.  Dealers, 
designers,  and  manufacturers  were,  of  course,  not  slow  to 
respond  to  this  new  departure,  and  the  results  are  to-day  very 
apparent.  Nowhere  else  in  the  world,  I  believe,  can  be  found 
to-day  furniture  more  artistic  and  original  in  design — but, 
unfortunately,  more  expensive  either — than  in  the  shops  of  the 
leading  German  cities.  A  series  of  local  expositions,  like  the 
one  in  Berlin  in  1896,  the  several  in  Leipzig,  Dresden,  Munich 
since,  did  much  to  make  the  well-to-do  German  public 
acquainted  with  this  enormous  progress  in  interior  decoration, 
and  it  has  to-day  become  an  established  feature  in  the  life  of 
the  German  upper  classes. 

The  new  "style,"  if  one  may  speak  of  it  that  way,  differs  very 
materially  from  the  old,  and  differs,  too,  much  from  the  one  seen 


•  LITERATURE   AND   ART  281 

in  wealthier  homes  in  France,  England,  or  this  country.  Its 
leading  features  may  be  summarized  thus :  A  thorough  blending 
of  colours,  with  neutral  or  half-tints  predominating;  sinuous  and 
graceful  lines  in  form;  patterns  and  hangings  showing  wavy 
lines,  entirely  fanciful,  with  no  attempt  to  copy  or  suggest  objects 
of  nature ;  half-lights  predominating ;  every  piece  of  appointment 
or  furniture  fitted  and  shaped  entirely  to  the  place  which  it  is  to 
occupy;  designs  always  original.  From  all  this  it  will  be  seen 
that  only  the  rich  can  afford  such  an  interieur,  but  the  sense  of 
colour,  of  beauty  of  outline,  and  of  harmony  awakened  by  them 
has  borne  fruit  in  the  other  classes  of  the  population  as  well,  and 
this  again  has  stimulated  the  artisan,  the  maker  and  creator  of 
all  the  articles  needed  in  a  home. 

The  Kaiser  has  identified  himself  with  this  part  of  the  art 
movement  in  Germany,  there  being  probably  nothing  in  it,  so 
far  as  he  has  been  able  to  discover,  savouring  of  lese  majeste,  or 
high  treason,  and  he  has  furthered  it  considerably.  It  is  a  move- 
ment which  was,  as  pointed  out  above,  more  needed  in  Germany 
than  elsewhere,  and  it  rounds  out  and  complements  the  art  move- 
ment as  a  whole.  Under  its  impetus  the  German  artisan  is  now 
beginning  to  recover  some  of  that  cunning  in  his  fingers  for 
which,  during  the  later  Middle  Ages,  and  particularly  during 
the  Renaissance  period,  he  was  famed.  Half-forgotten  arts,  like 
carving  in  oak,  ebony  and  ivory,  are  being  revived;  wood  sculp- 
ture and  delicate  bits  of  the  turner's  skill  are  again  to  be  seen 
in  many  shops,  and  while  in  other  spheres  the  machine  is  in 
Germany,  as  elsewhere,  replacing  man's  handiwork,  here  are 
trades  and  callings  which  require  the  nicest  and  most  individual 
Workmanship,  and  which  pay  artist's  wages,  besides.  Some  single 
bits  of  such  artistic  furniture  sell  as  high  as  a  thousand  dollars  and 
more.  And  wealthy  Germans  pay  these  prices  without  grum- 
bling, and  their  friends  see  in  it  nothing  more  extraordinary  than 
if  the  same  price  had  been  paid  for  a  good  painting. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

GERMAN    CHANCELLORS 

IT  is  interesting  to  note  the  fact  that  the  German  Emperor,  in 
his  unquestionably  sincere  desire  for  a  close  understanding  with 
this  republic,  has  broken  with  another  Bismarck  tradition. 
While  the  Iron  Chancellor  throughout  life  had  a  sincere  liking  for 
the  American  as  an  individual — as  witness  his  cherished  friend- 
ship for  Motley  and  his  amicable  relations  with  George  Bancroft, 
Bayard  Taylor,  William  Walter  Phelps,  Andrew  D.  White,  and 
other  cultivated  Americans — and  while  this  nation  had  for  him 
the  fascination  of  contrast,  he  nevertheless  studiously  avoided 
anything  like  a  reapproachement  with  the  United  States  during 
the  three  decades  when  he  almost  autocratically  shaped  Germany's 
foreign  policy.  It  was,  in  fact,  during  Bismarck's  regime  that 
relations  between  the  two  countries  became  rather  strained 
for  the  space  of  several  years — the  time  when  a  number  of  the 
most  important  American  products  were  shut  out  of  the  empire. 
This  is,  however,  readily  accounted  for,  the  chief  reason  being 
that  it  was  only  shortly  before  Bismarck's  death  that  this  country 
set  out  on  its  career  as  a  world  power  and  its  political  influence 
began  to  be  strongly  felt  beyond  the  seas.  It  is  futile,  of  course, 
to  argue  the  question  whether  Bismarck,  under  like  conditions, 
would  have  courted  the  political  friendship  of  this  country.  But 
while  his  views  on  American  national  aims  and  ideals  can  no 
longer  sway  the  public  mind  in  Germany,  it  is  at  least  of  his- 
torical import  to  record  here  some  pertinent  remarks  made  by 
the  aged  statesman,  in  the  writer's  hearing,  in  the  course  of  vari- 
ous conversations  which  it  was  his  good  fortune  to  obtain  with 
Bismarck  during  the  last  years  of  his  life.  These  conversations 
were  three  in  number,  and  they  occurred,  respectively,  on  July 
28,  1894  (while  Bismarck  was  passing  through  Berlin,  on  his  way 
to  his  Pomeranian  estate,  Varzin);  on  September  16  of  the  same 
year,  in  Varzin,  at  Bismarck's  invitation;  and  at  Fr'edrichsruh, 

28.- 


GERMAN    CHANCELLORS  283 

on  May  18,  1898,  during  the  Spanish- American  War.  This  last 
visit  was  brought  about  through  the  good  offices  of  the  American 
ambassador  in  Berlin,  Mr.  White,  and  on  this  occasion  Bismarck 
spoke,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain,  his  last  words  for 
publication.  My  purpose  at  that  time  had  been  mainly  to  secure, 
if  possible,  some  expressions  of  opinion  from  Bismarck  relative 
to  the  war.  In  that,  however,  I  was  not  measurably  successful, 
Count  Rantzau  (Bismarck's  son-in-law)  purposely  deflecting 
the  current  of  talk  when  it  ran  into  that  channel.  I  was 
subsequently  given  to  understand  that  this  was  done  because 
Bismarck  had,  that  very  day  at  breakfast,  become  greatly 
excited  on  the  topic,  after  reading  the  latest  despatches  about 
the  war,  and  because  excitement  of  any  kind  was  deemed  by 
Doctor  Schweninger,  his  attending  physician,  highly  injurious 
to  him. 

It  was  a  great  shock  to  me  when  I  was  led  in  to  Bismarck  that 
day.  His  gnarled  face,  with  its  sallow,  parchment-like  skin,  his 
mighty  body,  bent  and  shrunken,  and  his  great  hands  trembling 
as  if  with  ague,  even  when  grasping  his  stout  oaken  staff — all 
spoke  of  his  approaching  dissolution.  His  voice  was  raucous 
and  hollow,  and  his  eyes  alone  showed  that  this  was  Bismarck; 
their  steel-blue  still  shot  fire.  Yet  his  intellectual  faculties  were 
unimpaired.  Of  that  there  was  no  doubt.  The  large  table  in 
front  of  him  was  littered  with  German,  English,  French  and 
Russian  papers,  some  of  them  blue-penciled  in  the  text  and  on 
the  margins.  Doctor  Chrysander  told  me  that  his  interest 
in  politics,  both  foreign  and  domestic,  was  as  keen  as  ever, 
excepting  when  the  painful  attacks  of  his  destroying  malady 
seized  him,  which  was  sometimes  for  hours. 

It  was  a  bright,  sunny  day,  and  through  the  open  window 
of  the  morning-room  floated  the  balsamic  odor  of  the  nearby 
forest,  the  Sachsenwald,  the  breath  of  which  the  old  man  loved, 
and  beneath  whose  boughs  he  had  been  wont  to  wander  every 
day  as  long  as  strength  permitted.  But  here  he  sat,  propped  up 
in  his  easy-chair,  and  with  now  and  then  a  wistful  glance  at  the 
green  glory  beyond. 

After  a  few  introductory  remarks  Bismarck  told  me,  in  his 
curt  and  somewhat  burschikos  manner,  to  take  a  seat  opposite 
him,  and  then  gazed  at  me  steadfastly,  finally  breaking  silence 


284  GERMANY 

by  questioning  me  about  the  situation  in  America  and  Manila. 
He  accompanied  this  with  a  running  commentary  of  exclama- 
tions. I  drifted  into  some  talk  about  the  attitude  of  Europe, 
considered  none  too  friendly  toward  America  at  that  time ;  and 
from  that  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  but  a  step.  Then 
Bismarck  was  roused. 

"This  whole  war  is  indefensible,"  he  snarled,  "on  grounds  of 
international  equity.  It  is  a  war  of  pretext,  undertaken  against 
a  waning  power  for  the  sole  sake  of  spoils.  The  United  States 
complained  that  Cuba,  as  a  Spanish  colony,  was  being  maladmin- 
istered.  What  of  that !  Colonies  have  often  been  mismanaged, 
and  I  suppose  the  Americans,  when  they  shall  have  colonies,  will 
not  be  exempt.  But  that  is  no  fair  reason  for  dispossessing  the 
owner.  Other  powers  have  never  interfered  in  such  cases 
before.  The  Creole  and  the  West  Indian  half-breeds  are  difficult 
to  manage,  and  it  would  be  impossible  to  satisfy  them  under  any 
circumstances.  The  Americans  will  find  them,  later  on,  a  hard 
nut  to  crack.  Spoils,  spoils — all  else  is  pretense.  That,  too, 
is  seen  by  your  procedure  in  the  Philippines.  The  Americans 
call  this  Europe  of  ours  effete.  Well,  there  must  be  some  truth 
in  it,  or  else  there  would  have  been  a  united  European  front  to 
oppose  and  hinder  this  unrighteous  war." 

"And  the  Monroe  Doctrine?"  I  ventured. 

"That  is  a  species  of  arrogance  peculiarly  American  and 
inexcusable,"  said  Bismarck,  wrathfully,  and  his  eyes  gleamed. 
"You  in  the  United  States  are  like  the  English  in  that  respect: 
you  have  profited  for  ages  from  dissensions  and  ambitions  on  the 
continent  of  Europe.  That  insolent  dogma,  which  no  single 
European  power  has  ever  sanctioned,  has  flourished  on  them. 
And  how  will  you  enforce  it?  And  against  whom?  The 
powers  most  interested,  now  that  Spain  is  out  of  the  way,  are 
England  and  France,  the  two  leading  naval  powers.  Will  you 
drive  them  off  American  waters  with  your  pigmy  navy?  The 
Monroe  Doctrine  is  a  spectre  that  would  vanish  in  plain  day- 
light. Besides,  the  American  interpretation  of  this  presumptu- 
ous idea  has  itself  varied  constantly,  and  has  been  buried  out  of 
sight  for  many  years  at  a  time.  There  is  no  definition  of  the 
idea  that  has  ever  been  universally  accepted  in  your  country. 
I  remember  an  incident  during  the  war  between  Chile  and  Peru 


GERMAN    CHANCELLORS  285 

which  illustrates  that  at  that  time,  for  instance,  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  was  virtually  dead.  We  had  some  information  which 
made  us  suspect  that  the  Washington  government  intended 
to  interfere  either  as  an  uncalled-for  peacemaker  or  else  as  an 
arbitrator.  At  that  time,  as  now,  Mr.  White  represented  the 
United  States  in  Berlin,  and  I  sent  Lothar  Bucher  from  the 
Foreign  Office  to  him  to  ascertain,  if  possible,  whether  these 
rumours  were  true  or  not.  Mr.  White  assured  him  that  they 
were  not,  but  I  insisted  on  something  more  definite  than  his  mere 
belief,  and  so  Mr.  White  drew  up  a  cablegram  to  his  government 
before  Bucher 's  eyes,  and  in  a  short  while  got  his  reply,  and  it 
emphatically  denied  these  reports,  and  furthermore  gave 
assurances  that  no  such  step  was  contemplated.  And  so  it 
proved.  At  that  time,  then,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  as  good 
as  dead." 

Here  Count  Rantzau  broke  in  with  a  remark  intended  to  shift 
the  conversation,  which  had  that  effect.  Soon  after  I  took  my 
leave,  and  two  months  later  the  bells  all  over  Germany  tolled 
out  the  death  of  the  old  statesman. 

When  I  had  spoken  with  Bismarck  in  midsummer  four  years 
before,  he  looked  still  hale  enough,  although  almost  an  octo- 
genarian. But  to  those  who  had  known  him  in  the  days  of  his 
power  there  was  one  ominous  sign  of  senility;  for  as  the  crowd 
outside  the  gates  of  the  Stettin  railway  station  sent  in  volley 
after  volley  of  thunderous  cheers,  his  eyes  became  moist.  I 
saw  the  tears  glisten.  Thus,  then,  these  proofs  of  his  unabated 
popularity — a  popularity  which  to  the  day  of  his  fall  he  had 
despised — moved  him  strangely.  It  was  short.ly  after  the  grand- 
son of  his  alter  Herr  had  sealed  the  truce  with  some  bottles  of 
rare  old  Rhenish:  but  that  it  had  been  only  a  truce,  and  not  a 
fast  compact  of  peace,  was  apparent  on  that  very  occasion,  for 
the  government  had  done  everything  it  could  in  a  passive  way 
to  prevent  a  popular  demonstration  for  the  idol  of  the  nation, 
not  alone  by  keeping  secret  the  news  of  his  coming  through 
Berlin  that  day,  but  also  by  rigidly  enforcing  police  regulations 
at  and  about  the  station  where  Bismarck's  private  car  had  to  halt 
for  half  an  hour.  But  the  delegations  of  university  students 
were  not  to  be  baffled,  and  they  were  there  in  full  "Wichs,"  with 
swords  gleaming  and  colours  flying,  and  the  multitude  beyond  the 


286  GERMANY 

gates  was  numerous  and  enthusiastic  I  had  seen  Bismarck 
only  once  before.  That  was  in  1876.  as  he  was  whirled  on  his 
way  from  the  palace  through  the  Wilhelm  Strasse.  looking  as 
stern  as  Fate,  and  as  rugged  and  long-lived  as  one  of  his 
Sachsenwald  oaks.  He  was  then  in  the  zenith  of  his  power. 
Now  I  saw  him  dethroned,  but  mighty  still.  Doctor  Chrysander 
had  arranged  things  for  me,  and  I  climbed  into  the  car  and  was 
formally  presented.  Princess  Bismarck,  his  faithful  wife,  who 
was  with  him,  cautioned  him  against  the  draft  from  the  window, 
and  put  his  ample  rustic  cap  on  his  head.  She  eyed  me  askance. 
But  Bismarck,  during  the  five  minutes  he  could  give  me,  was 
debonair,  and  spoke  without  restraint.  Among  other  things  he 
said: 

"Economically  considered,  I  believe  that  the  United  States 
has  a  great  future.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  for  us  people  of 
Europe  to  protect  ourselves  in  time  against  your  competition, 
for  whenever  the  point  arrives  that  the  United  States  is  not 
checked  in  its  inroads  on  our  agriculture,  complete  ruin  will 
overtake  our  land-holding  classes.  It  was  the  knowledge  of 
American  competition,  with  which,  without  protective  lines,  we 
are  unable  to  cope  in  our  smaller  and  older  and  poorer  lands, 
which  dictated  my  agricultural  policy  in  Germany.  There  may 
come  a  day,  however,  when  it  will  no  longer  be  possible  to  keep 
up  artificial  barriers  against  your  cereals  and  meats,  and  that 
will  be  an  evil  day  for  Germany." 

A  word  having  been  thrown  in  by  me  about  American  politics, 
Bismarck  said: 

"Your  politics  over  there  have  always  remained  a  sealed  book 
to  me.  And  it  seems  American  politicians  are  not  much  better 
off  in  that  respect.  But  don't  you  believe  yourself  that  the 
whole  edifice — I  mean  your  political  one — will  some  day  tumble 
about  your  ears?  To  me,  at  least,  it  rather  looks  that  way. 
What  are  your  Coxey  armies  and  your  monster  strikes,  your 
periodically  returning  business  crises  and  panics,  but  signs  of 
exhaustion,  of  decadence — signs  of  vital  defects  in  a  machinery 
which  no  longer  is  adequate  to  your  needs  and  which,  there- 
fore, causes  evil?" 

The  Chicago  World's  Fair  prompted  a  question  on  my  part, 
and  Bismarck  said: 


GERMAN   CHANCELLORS  287 

"I  do  not  believe  in  these  large  international  expositions  of 
the  kind  of  which  we  have  already  had  more  than  enough.  To 
the  world  at  large  they  do  not  bring  much  of  lasting  benefit,  and 
for  each  city  in  which  such  a  large  exposition  is  held  it  has 
more  of  evil  than  of  good  in  its  wake.  It  increases  the  homeless 
and  penniless  crowds  in  those  cities,  and  after  the  thing  is  over 
it  is  difficult,  almost  impossible,  to  get  rid  of  them  again.  It 
also  leads  to  an  increase  in  the  price  of  necessaries  of  life,  to  a 
temporary  increase  in  wages,  and  to  a  permanent  increase  in 
rents.  All  these  are  unhealthy  consequences,  followed  later  by 
serious  reaction." 

His  Agrarian  views  and  his  fears  of  unchecked  American  com- 
petition Bismarck  repeated,  a  couple  of  months  later,  when  I 
visited  him,  at  his  invitation,  at  his  Varzin  estate.  To  most 
men  of  his  past,  life  on  this  vast  but  dreary  estate  in  the  most 
backward  and  feudal  part  of  Pomerania  would  have  proved 
unendurably  dull.  His  only  regular  intercourse ,  besides  the  mem- 
bers of  his  family,  was  with  Commercial  Councilor  Behrend  in 
nearby  Hammermuhle,  the  pastor  in  Wussow,  and  the  district 
president  in  Pannewitz,  and  they  were  very  ordinary  mortals. 
But  Bismarck,  to  whom  love  of  a  quiet  rural  life  descended  from 
a  long  line  of  ancestors,  evidently  enjoyed  it.  He  consorted  with 
his  rustic  neighbours,  many  of  whom  were  his  tenants,  on  terms 
of  perfect  equality,  and  entered  with  enjoyment  into  their  local 
gossip.  His  steam  dairy  and  his  distillery,  and  above  all  his 
paper  mill,  engrossed  his  thoughts  during  the  larger  part  of  the 
day.  Though  a  special  messenger  brought  his  mail  to  him  every 
day  from  the  nearest  railway  station,  some  seven  or  eight  miles 
off,  he  never  complained  about  its  tardy  arrival.  His  wife's 
failing  health  seemed  to  me  to  be  the  only  shadow  on  his  life 
there.  It  was  with  a  sad  smile  that,  towering  over  the  feeble  and 
attenuated  form  of  his  Johanna,  he  said,  "You  see,  we're  both 
growing  old." 

After  dinner,  a  very  simple  affair,  he  lighted  his  big  porcelain 
pipe — cigars  and  wine  or  beer,  except  a  half  Schoppen  of  light 
Moselle,  were  forbidden  him — and  chatted,  often  interrupting 
himself  to  put  questions  that  occurred  to  him,  in  that  peculiar 
style,  a  mixture  of  frank  cynicism,  bonhomie,  and  picturesque 
humour  that  lent  a  spice  to  whatever  he  said,  on  a  variety  of 


288  GERMANY 

subjects,  touching  them  all  quite  lightly.  He  mentioned  the 
Wilson  bill,  then  pending,  and  spoke  of  Cleveland  in  high  terms, 
saying  that  he  had  "the  stuff  in  him  out  of  which  statesmen  are 
made,"  but  that  he  was  "thrown  away  in  a  republic."  He 
compared  parliamentary  methods  in  Germany  and  in  America, 
and  deplored  the  fact  that  in  the  absence  of  two  great  parties,  as 
they  existed  in  the  United  States,  he  had  always  been  forced  to 
make  Politik  von  Fall  zu  Fall.  Having  smoked  his  pipe,  he  care- 
fully emptied  the  ashes,  stood  up  the  pipe  in  its  place  on  a  rack, 
and  kissing  his  ailing  wife  softly  on  the  forehead,  left  the  room, 
and  a  minute  later  was  striding  along  the  path  to  the  distillery. 
Count  Caprivi,  Bismarck's  successor,  was  a  man  of  an  essen- 
tially different  fiber.  Strong  common  sense,  the  virtues  of  the 
Prussian  soldier — blind  obedience  and  loyalty  to  his  chief— 
simple,  unaffected  modes  of  speech  and  living,  coupled  with 
candour,  seemed  to  me  his  leading  characteristics.  Doubtless 
it  was  these  qualities  of  the  man  which  had  induced  the  Kaiser, 
after  the  irretrievable  rupture  with  Bismarck,  to  pick  him  out 
from  among  hundreds  of  other  Prussian  generals.  Caprivi 
achieved  some  lasting  good  for  Germany  during  his  brief  term 
of  office,  and  with  his  commercial  treaties,  concluded  with  the 
principal  customers  of  the  empire,  he  enabled  Germany  to  attain 
to  that  commercial  prosperity  and  expansion  which  she  enjoyed 
for  a  decennium.  It  is  matter  of  history  that  his  downfall  was 
due  to  the  bitter  hatred  and  the  unscrupulous  intrigues  of  the 
powerful  land-holding  aristocracy.  They  had,  in  derision  of  his 
poverty,  dubbed  him  dcr  Mann  ohne  Ar  und  Halm  (the  man 
without  a  foot  of  soil  or  blade  of  grass),  and  wilily  insinuated, 
on  all  occasions,  that  a  man  who  owned  not  even  an  acre  of  soil 
could  of  necessity  have  no  sympathy  with  agricultural  interests. 
Caprivi  was  the  most  accessible  chancellor  Germany  has  yet  had, 
and,  strangely  enough  for  a  man  who  had  served  half  a  century 
in  the  Prussian  army,  he  was  liberal  in  his  political  and  social 
ideas.  The  German  press  and  foreign  correspondents  enjoyed 
during  his  short  regime  a  degree  of  comparative  freedom  which 
formed  in  itself  a  striking  contrast  with  the  era  of  Bismarck, 
when  expulsions  and  jail  terms  for  press  offenses  were  of  too  fre- 
quent occurrence.  Caprivi  was  clear-sighted  enough  to  perceive 
that  Germany,  as  a  world  power,  as  a  country  whose  industry 


GERMAN   CHANCELLORS  289 

and  trade  had  become  paramount  interests,  could  not  in  the  logic 
of  things  remain  under  the  dominance  of  an  Agrarian  party, 
whose  narrow  egotism  would  keep  the  empire  in  a  commercial 
feud  with  all  its  neighbours. 

A  fortnight  before  he  laid  down  the  heavy  burden  of  an  office 
which  he  had  never  sought,  and  which  he  had  taken  up  only  in 
the  same  spirit  in  which  he  would,  on  command,  have  stormed 
an  enemy's  position  in  war  time,  Count  Caprivi  intimated  to  me 
that  his  position  with  the  Emperor  was  "shaken,"  and  that  he 
expected  any  day  to  step  down  and  out.  He  rightly  attributed 
the  lack  of  confidence  which  the  Emperor  had  shown  him  of  late 
to  the  insistent  and  insidious  machinations  of  the  Agrarians, 
whose  influence  at  court  and  everywhere  else  was  undeniable. 
He  added:  "The  Agrarian  party  did  very  well  when  Germany, 
and  especially  Prussia,  was  still  preeminently  an  agricultural 
country ;  but  to-day  to  yield  in  essentials  to  their  influence  would 
mean  ruin  to  Germany.  We  can  no  longer  exclude  the  agricul- 
tural products  of  other  nations,  whether  it  be  Russia  or  the 
United  States.  Our  labouring  population — and  that  means  the 
bulk  of  the  nation — imperatively  requires  cheaper  foodstuffs 
than  our  own  soil  will  give  us.  To  prevent  this,  as  the  Agrarian 
party  tries  to  do,  is  to  prevent  our  rise  as  an  exporting  country. 
Commercial  treaties  are  feasible  only  on  the  principle  of  give  and 
take,  and  some  interests  are  always  bound  to  suffer. " 

Caprivi  was  a  sincere  advocate  of  a  close  friendship  between 
Germany  and  both  England  and  the  United  States,  and  on  the 
night  of  his  leaving  office,  two  weeks  later,  he  granted  me  a  short 
interview,  during  which  he  made  some  significant  remarks. 
That  stormy  scene  at  the  palace  between  him  and  the  Emperor 
had  taken  place  only  a  couple  of  hours  before,  yet  I  found  him 
calm  and  unperturbed,  just  on  the  point  of  retiring.  It  was 
about  ten  in  the  evening.  With  unruffled  temper  and  smiling 
quizzically,  he  shook  hands  and  offered  me  a  cigar,  which  his  gray- 
haired  old  valet  brought  in.  Then,  in  his  matter-of-fact  way, 
he  chatted  with  me  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  He  said  he  was 
honestly  glad  to  be  "  out  of  it, "  and  to  have  the  chance  to  spend 
the  remainder  of  his  days  in  peace  and  quiet.  "  I  have  not  had 
an  hour's  happiness  since  I  came  into  this  house."  said  he,  ''  and 
my  old  bones  can  now  take  a  little  ease. " 


290  GERMANY 

He  ruminated  awhile,  blowing  the  wreaths  of  smoke  before 
him  thoughtfully.  "Of  course,"  he  then  remarked,  "I  under- 
stand why  the  Agrarians  hate  me.  As  long  as  my  influence 
prevailed  with  the  Emperor  the  commercial  interests  of  the 
country  predominated.  The  Agrarians  are  driving  the  country 
into  a  tariff  war,  and  they  fear  a  close  understanding  with 
America  and  England.  And  yet  that  is  bound  to  come,  and  it 
will  be  of  great  advantage  to  Germany,  not  only  politically, 
though  that  alone  is  an  important  factor,  but  in  its  educational 
influence  on  the  masses.  Contrary  to  Bismarck's  views,  who 
always  considered  a  close  friendship  with  Russia  of  paramount 
importance  to  us,  I  think  Russia's  political  influence  on  us  has 
always  been  deleterious.  We  must  assimilate  with  nations 
that  are  politically  and  commercially  more  advanced  than  we. 
The  influences  of  the  English-speaking  races  on  our  thought, 
our  literature,  our  political  development,  have  always  been 
wholesome  ones,  and  with  England  and  the  United  States  as 
our  fast  friends  we  need  not  fear  either  France  or  Russia,  no 
matter  whether  the  Dreibund  lasts  another  ten  years  or  not. 
And  the  Emperor  personally  feels  the  same  way  about  this ;  but 
his  whole  political  surroundings  are  against  the  idea." 

Prince  Hohenlohe,  too,  was  not  ill  disposed  toward  this 
country;  but  as  a  very  old  man,  whose  political  education  and 
diplomatic  training  fell  into  a  time  when  the  nineteenth  century 
was  still  young  and  this  republic  only  a  stripling,  he  knew  very 
little  about  the  United  States,  and  his  political  thoughts  turned 
mainly  upon  the  old  orbits — Russia,  Austria,  France  and 
England.  At  a  garden  party  given  in  the  extensive  park  behind 
the  Chancellor's  palace,  he  once  engaged  me  in  conversation 
about  America,  and  I  discovered,  to  my  amazement,  that  his 
ideas  regarding  its  civilization  and  customs  were  rather  crude. 
They  seemed  to  date  from  the  time  Dickens  paid  his  first  visit 
here,  and  what  I  told  him  about  American  universities  and  other 
evidences  of  advanced  culture  he  seemed  to  take  cum  grano  salis. 
Besides,  though  he  was  a  charmingly  liberal  man  in  most  things, 
he  was  a  grand  seigneur  of  the  old  school,  and  he  evidently  held 
in  small  esteem  a  country  of  such  democratic  institutions  and 
manners  as  ours.  But  in  his  economic  convictions  he  came  very 
near  to  Caprivi's,  and  he  favoured  a  close  commercial  treaty  with 


GERMAN   CHANCELLORS  291 

this  country,  as  he  told  me,  though  on  new  lines  and  not  based 
on  the  old  treaty  with  Prussia  of  1828.  However,  the  infirmities 
of  old  age  prevented  more  and  more,  during  his  chancellor- 
ship, the  full  exercise  of  his  constitutional  powers,  and  Count 
Buelow,  during  the  last  six  months  of  the  Hohenlohe  regime,  was 
virtually  both  Chancellor  and  Foreign  Secretary. 

In  January  of  last  year  I  paid  my  respects  to  Prince  Hohenlohe 
for  the  last  time.  He  was  then  staying  at  a  hotel  in  Meran,  in 
the  southern  Tyrol,  to  benefit  his  failing  health.  Like  many  men 
of  his  stamp,  he  liked  gossip  and  personal  anecdote,  and  he 
listened  with  rapt  attention  to  my  little  budget  of  Berlin  stories, 
frequently  putting  his  hand  to  his  ear  to  aid  his  defective  hearing. 
Then  he  said,  when  the  talk  drifted  to  America : 

"  We  are  likely  to  have  a  good  deal  of  trouble  with  our  Agrarians, 
who  are  dead  set  against  any  economic  understanding  with 
the  United  States.  This  tariff  bill  now  in  preparation  goes  too 
far.  It  yields  too  much  to  the  interests  of  our  large  land-holders. 
These  are  not  the  interests  which  ought  to  prevail  in  such  a 
matter.  I  told  the  Emperor  so,  and  I  fought  Buelow's  ideas  on  the 
subject,  who  sees  too  much  couleur  de  rose  in  the  matter.  What 
will  the  Americans  say  to  a  tariff  which  bears  so  heavily  on  their 
exports  to  this  country  ?  Buelow  gives  way  too  much  to  the 
Agrarians,  who  would  like  nothing  better  than  to  embroil  us 
with  every  nation  that  sends  us  foodstuffs.  The  Emperor  is 
against  the  bill,  but  Buelow  has  persuaded  him  that  he  cannot 
get  along  without  the  Agrarians  in  home  politics.  Well,  I  wash 
my  hands  of  the  whole  affair." 

Count  Bernhard  von  Buelow  has  become  somewhat  enigmatical 
since  he  rose  to  the  post  of  Chancellor.  He  loves  to  express  him- 
self in  metaphor  when  giving  public  utterance  to  his  thoughts, 
and  in  Germany  his  oracular  sayings  furnish  endless  opportunity 
for  interpretation.  His  mind  is  far  more  sinuous  than  that  of 
his  predecessor,  and  he  has  now  and  then  contradicted  himself 
in  his  speeches.  But  while  he  has  frankly  confessed  himself  an 
Agrarian,  and  while  his  family  traditions  and  leanings  and  his 
personal  affiliations  are  altogether  on  the  side  of  the  Agrarians, 
he  nevertheless  would  like  to  see  a  better  and  closer  political 
understanding  established  between  Germany  and  this  country. 
Of  this,  I  think,  there  is  no  doubt.  On  one  occasion,  not  many 


292  GERMANY 

months  after  tne  close  of  the  war  with  Spain,  taking  President 
McKinley's  message  to  Congress  for  his  text,  he  expressed  himself 
to  me  in  this  way:  "Anything  which  will  tend  to  bring  the  two 
nations  closer  together  must  be  welcomed  on  both  sides  of  the 
ocean.  This  is  a  sentiment  to  which  I  have  given  repeated 
expression.  Misunderstandings  of  a  political  or  economic  nature 
are  liable  to  arise  now  and  then  between  Germany  and  America, 
as  between  other  countries;  but  with  good  will  on  the  part  of 
both  governments — and  there  is  every  evidence  of  such  good  will 
— these  misunderstandings  are  sure  to  be  amicably  adjusted. 
The  two  nations  have  much  in  common,  and  the  millions  of 
Germans  who  have  found  a  second  home  in  America  are  alone  a 
tie  that  ought  to  bind  very  closely.  There  is  absolutely  nothing 
of  a  serious  nature,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  that  ought  to  breed  discord 
between  the  two  countries,  and  there  are  many  reasons  which 
ought  to  unite  them.  The  press  can  do  much  in  furtherance  of 
this." 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE    OUTLOOK    FOR    GERMANY 

WHAT  after  all  is  the  immediate  outlook  for  Germany  ?  What 
horoscope  can  be  cast  in  view  of  all  the  points  of  undeniable 
strength,  and  of  as  undeniable  weaknesses,  possessed  by  the  young 
world  power  ? 

To  play  prophet  is  under  all  circumstances  a  ticklish  and 
generally  a  thankless  task.  The  difficulty  of  venturing  upon  a 
prognostication  is,  however,  greatly  augmented  in  the  case  of 
Germany,  as  the  reader  will  probably  conclude  for  himself 
after  perusing  the  contents  of  this  book. 

With  such  rapidly  changing  conditions  and  such  a  strong 
element  of  uncertainty  in  nearly  all  departments  of  public  life, 
the  whole  situation  must  of  necessity  appear  hazy  in  its  out- 
lines, and  the  sphere  of  vision  greatly  circumscribed  thereby. 
With  a  Kaiser  who  is  abnormally  impulsive  and  prone  to  sudden 
and  radical  changes  of  front ;  with  a  Reichstag  composed  of  a 
shifting  and  wavering  majority;  with  the  former  sheet  anchor 
of  Germany's  foreign  policy,  the  Dreibund,  tearing  from  its 
moorings ;  and  with  the  necessity  of  modifying  her  whole  course 
of  action,  as  her  powerful  rivals  modify  theirs,  it  seems  at  first 
sight,  indeed,  next  to  impossible  to  predict  Germany's  future, 
even  if  but  the  immediate  future  be  meant  by  that. 

Yet  there  are  certain  things  that  may  be  foretold  with  some 
degree  of  confidence. 

As  to  the  Empire's  foreign  policy,  that  in  the  main  seems 
marked  out  for  it  by  the  irresistible  logic  of  events,  present  and  of 
the  recent  past.  To  put  it  in  a  few  words,  Germany  must  and 
will  seek  a  close  and  intimate  understanding  with  this  country 
and  England,  and  she  will  not  fail  in  effecting  it.  Where  there's 
a  will,  there's  a  way.  The  Kaiser  will  find  that  way.  He  must 
be  given  credit  for  considerable  shrewdness  in  his  foreign  policy 
hitherto,  though  it  has  not  been  exempt  from  serious  mistakes 

293 


294  GERMANY 

and  even  some  signal  failures.  Still,  in  the  main,  he  has  known 
how  to  steer  the  German  ship  of  state  well  beyond  cliffs  and 
shallows,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  he  will  sagaciously  act  on  the 
conclusions  reached  some  time  ago.  At  present  he  is  still  merely 
posing  as  the  friend  of  this  country,  no  important  opportunities 
having  arisen  of  late  to  prove  the  substance  as  well  as  the 
semblance  of  friendship.  But  the  first  opportunity  that  shall 
present  itself  he  will  seize  with  a  vim  and  a  vigour  all  his  own 
In  the  case  of  England  the  same  opportunity  will  also  come, 
and  probably  soon.  With  that  exhausting  and  execrated  war  in 
South  Africa  over,  England  will  be  herself  again;  the  present 
rancor  in  Germany  will  subside,  and  so  will  the  extreme  sensi- 
tiveness to  criticism  in  England.  Normal  relations  will  quickly 
be  followed  by  friendly  and  intimate  ones. 

The  three  great  Germanic  powers  will  then  be  the  dictators 
of  the  world.  Strong  in  their  peaceful  aims  and  transcendently 
strong  in  their  joint  material  and  moral  equipment,  this  union 
of  forces  will  have  nothing  provocative  of  armed  resistance  in 
its  character,  and  the  world  will  needs  bow  and  submit  to  its 
benign  sway.  Civilization  with  all  its  blessings  will  then  be 
carried  to  the  farthest  corners  of  the  globe,  and  the  advance  of 
progress  will  be  unchecked.  Russia  has  a  gigantic  mission  of 
her  own,  amply  sufficient  in  its  scope  to  satisfy  even  lier  vaulting 
ambition,  and  one  with  which  the  three  dominating  powers  will 
have  neither  right  nor  inclination  to  meddle.  France,  as  Russia's 
satellite,  will  have  to  march  in  Russia's  wake.  It  will  be  France's 
cue  to  place  no  stones  in  the  path  of  the  new  political  constella- 
tion, for  her  interests  will  coincide  with  such  a  policy  of  non- 
interference. And  the  three  powers,  whose  joint  potentialities 
for  good  are  matchless  and  resistless,  will  calmly  proceed  on  their 
own  manifest  mission.  They  will  be  the  "Culturtrager,"  the 
bearers  of  culture,  to  the  universe. 

In  her  domestic  policy,  Germany  must  gradually  conform  to 
her  standing  as  a  modern  world  power,  with  all  that  this  word 
implies.  A  new  Liberal  party  will  arise,  powerful  and  creative 
in  its  tendencies,  not  merely  negative  as  the  present  one.  Both 
Count  Caprivi  and  Prince  Hohenlohe,  essentially  Liberals  in 
political  conceptions  and  aims,  had  the  desire  to  govern  with 
the  aid  of  the  Left  ir  the  Reichstag.  But  there  was  no  way  of 


THE    OUTLOOK   FOR   GERMANY  295 

accomplishing  this.  The  Liberals  themselves  were  numerically 
too  weak  to  carry  out  any  policy  whatsoever,  even  with  the 
Socialists  and  extreme  Radicals  as  their  allies,  and  the  attempt 
had  to  be  abandoned.  The  Liberal  party  in  Germany  is  now 
undergoing  slow  transformation.  It  must  first  rid  itself  of  its 
inept  leaders,  and  of  a  habit  of  thought  and  action  which  knows 
only  to  deny  and  never  to  affirm;  only  to  oppose  and  never  to 
frame  legislation;  only  to  criticize  and  never  to  create.  The 
coming  Liberal  party  will  present  a  real  and  tangible  programme 
to  the  voters,  and  it  will  comprise  the  living  forces  of  Germany 
in  thought  and  deed.  Millions  of  voters  in  the  empire  are 
impatiently  waiting  for  such  a  Liberal  party,  and  will  hail  its 
advent  with  joy.  Its  programme  will  be  imbued  with  fresh  and 
realizable  ideas,  and  will  powerfully  represent  that  moderate 
and  rational  progress  which  alone  bears  fruit  and  wins  decisive 
battles.  This  party  will  have  thrown  off  the  thraldom  of  old 
and  sterile  leaders  like  Eugene  Richter  and  Heinrich  Rickert, 
fossilized  in  the  issues  of  the  past,  and  will  have  turned  to  the 
younger  men,  like  Theodore  Barth,  whose  thoughts  and  aims 
dwell  in  the  present  and  in  the  near  future. 

The  ranks  of  the  Liberal  factions  contain  even  now  much  indi- 
vidual merit  and  a  very  great  percentage  of  just  those  elements 
which  have  made  the  young  empire  what  it  is.  The  thinkers 
like  Virchow  and  Mommsen,  the  economic  path-breakers  like 
Siemens  and  Doctor  Koch,  and  the  men  of  initiative  like 
Ballin  and  Wiegand,  are  of  it.  The  great  manufacturers  and 
merchants,  bankers  and  financiers  are  Liberals.  But  as  soon  as 
their  present  ineffective  party  methods  have  been  discarded  and 
replaced  by  aggressive  and  modern  ones,  as  soon  as  the  broad 
middle  classes  of  Germany  are  confronted  by  a  Liberalism  with 
a  live  programme  and  with  the  chances  of  success  in  its  favour, 
such  a  Liberal  party  will  sweep  the  country.  Millions  of  voters 
who  now  secretly  vote  the  Socialist  ballot,  as  standing  for  the 
only  party  that  believes  in  itself  and  its  mission,  and  which  has 
backbone  enough  not  only  to  speak  its  mind  on  all  subjects,  but  to 
act  in  strict  accordance  with  its  convictions,  will  then  flock  to  the 
Liberal  banners.  With  such  a  party  the  Kaiser  and  his  advisers 
will  indeed  be  able  to  govern  and  to  carry  out  those  measures 
of  internal  improvement,  economic  and  political,  which  are  at 


296  GERMANY 

present  consistently  frustrated  by  that  conclave  virorum  obscu- 
rorum  consisting  of  reactionary  Prussian  younkers  and  of  men 
who  make  their  religious  faith  their  sole  political  confession. 
Such  far-reaching  plans  as  the  Kaiser's  Midland  Canal,  as  the 
reform  of  the  Prussian  election  laws  and  many  others  will  then 
be  quite  feasible. 

Of  course,  the  Socialist  party  will  be  affiliated  with  the  coming 
Liberal  party,  as  it  usually  is  now  on  all  crucial  questions.  There 
will  be  no  harm  in  that,  for  the  Socialist  party  will  by  that  time 
have  thrown  off  most  of  its  old  and  useless  shibboleths  and 
Utopian  aims,  and  will  be  ready  to  make  a  pact  with  existing 
conditions,  as  their  brethren,  the  Socialists  of  France,  of  Belgium 
and  of  Holland  have  done  in  a  measure.  They  will  have  become 
in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  what  the  Socialist  party  in  Germany  is 
largely  even  to-day,  a  radical  labour  party,  with  nothing  in  their 
programme  that  cannot  be  realized  some  time  or  other,  and  with- 
out first  aiming  at  the  obliteration  of  the  present  system  of 
society.  There  will  then  occur  questions  on  which  the  Socialists 
will  differ  from  the  Liberals,  as  there  do  now,  and  in  some  cases 
the  Reactionists  of  every  stripe  will  vote  with  the  Socialists  for 
selfish  or  partisan  reasons.  In  the  main,  though,  the  interests 
of  the  new  Liberal  party,  based  as  they  are  going  to  be  upon 
those  of  the  largest  stratum  of  German  society,  will  run  parallel 
with  those  of  the  then  Socialists. 

The  left  wing  of  the  present  National  Liberal  faction,  which 
means  the  really  liberal  and  progressive  portion  of  it,  will  leave 
their  faction  and  amalgamate  with  the  big  Liberal  party,  and 
the  right  wing  will  go  where  it  belongs — t.  e.,  to  join  the 
Conservatives.  This  will  further  simplify  matters  and  make  a 
really  parliamentarian  form  of  government  possible  for  the  first 
time,  permitting  the  government  to  reckon  with  known  or  easily 
ascertained  factors  in  projected  legislation  and  in  all  political 
questions  of  importance.  As  to  the  Centre,  or  Ultramontane 
party,  at  present  a  tower  of  parliamentary  strength  and  by  far  the 
largest  fraction  of  the  Reichstag,  all  these  events  will  not  come 
to  pass  without  altering,  too,  its  party  complexion.  One  portion 
of  it,  the  one  even  now  responsible  for  whatever  progressive 
legislation  the  Centre  has  fathered,  will  leave  it  and  join  the 
Liberal  party. 


297 

Freed  thus  from  those  shackles  of  a  many-hued  factionism 
which  makes  parliamentary  government,  properly  so-called,  an 
impossibility  in  the  Germany  of  to-day,  the  empire  will  be  much 
stronger  at  home,  as  it  will  be  stronger  abroad.  It  will  then  not 
run  the  constant  danger  of  loosening  or  breaking  the  ties  of 
friendship  which  unite  Germany  with  other  nations,  just  to 
humour  her  privileged  class  of  landowners,  whose  votes  the 
government  cannot  do  without  in  its  domestic  policy.  Her 
foreign  and  her  domestic  policies  will  not  contradict  each  other, 
but  will  present  a  homogeneous  front,  words  tallying  with  acts. 
The  Liberal  party  in  Germany  has  ever  favoured  a  close  under- 
standing with  both  England  and  the  United  States.  Harmony 
of  relations  will  be  reestablished.  Liberalism  dominant  once 
more  in  Germany,  a  Liberal  policy  abroad  would  be  a  matter  of 
course.  The  Prussian  younker  party  would  sigh,  as  it  does 
now,  for  the  "traditional  friendship"  with  Russia,  but  there 
would  be  no  particular  harm  in  that. 

Commercial  and  manufacturing  advance  in  Germany  will  then 
be  unchecked.  The  nation  will  reach  out  further  and  further. 
The  latent  hostility  of  Russia  and  France  would  be  more  than 
discounted  by  the  friendship  of  England  and  the  United  States. 
Her  trade  would  no  longer  fear  a  cataclysm  in  the  event  of  war  with 
either  of  the  two  English-speaking  nations,  and  the  normal  con- 
dition would  prevail  of  the  best  man  winning  his  way  in  the  world. 

Specializing  in  manufacture  and  commerce  will  become  more 
of  a  feature  in  Germany  then  than  it  is  now,  and  this  for  obvious 
reasons.  Germany's  strength  in  manufacturing,  as  in  her  science 
and  art,  lies  naturally  in  her  capacity  of  taking  infinite  pains. 
Therefore  all  such  commodities  in  the  manufacture  of  which 
this  capacity  may  be  fully  exercised,  and  in  which  minute  exact- 
ness and  thorough  workmanship,  coupled  with  special  skill  and 
vast  experience,  plays  a  leading  part,  are  the  kind  Germany  will 
excel  in,  and  naturally  enough  these  are  the  ones  to  which  her 
manufacturers  will  in  the  main  confine  themselves.  Science 
will  be  utilized  in  her  industry  even  more  than  is  now  the  case. 
Such  articles,  for  instance,  are  all  instruments  of  precision, 
scientific,  optical,  medical  implements,  toys,  minute  tools,  chem- 
ical products,  dyes,  carvings,  tapestries,  chinaware,  and  a  host 
of  new  wares  yet  to  be  invented  or  practically  applied. 


298  GERMANY 

Specialization  being  the  evident  trend  in  manufacturing  every- 
where, and  this  being  in  perfect  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  as  seen  clearly  in  the  most  advanced  countries,  such  indus- 
trial development  in  Germany  will  be  perfectly  normal.  The 
further  consolidation  of  capital  and  the  extension  of  industrial 
syndicates  there,  being  really  in  its  essence  but  a  concomitant 
and  outgrowth  of  specialization,  will  hasten  and  promote  this 
movement.  There  is,  besides,  plenty  of  evidence  in  the  Germany 
of  to-day  that  such  is  the  course  events  are  to  take.  Trusts  and 
syndicates,  though  their  coming  was  later  than  here,  and  though 
with  one  or  two  exceptions  they  are  not  of  such  gigantic  dimen- 
sions, have  multiplied  in  the  empire  of  late  years,  so  much 
so  that  they  have  become  an  important  topic  of  political  dis- 
cussion, and  that  the  Reichstag  in  its  last  session  appointed  a 
committee  to  investigate  the  problem  and  study  the  effects  of 
their  operations.  The  latest  figures  give  a  total  of  several  hun- 
dred such  combinations  in  the  empire,  and  the  Sugar  Trust  and 
several  others  represent  hundreds  of  millions  of  invested  capital. 

As  her  own  rawstuffs  give  out,  or  at  least  are  no  longer  to  be 
obtained  as  cheaply  as  these  same  rawstuffs  can  be  procured  from 
younger  countries  with  greater  natural  fertility  and  resources, 
and  as  she  then  will  be  forced  to  import  them  in  ever-increasing 
ratio,  she  will  have  to  turn  her  attention  altogether  to  the  task 
of  working  up  these  rawstuffs  into  finished  fabrics  of  such  incom- 
parable beauty,  durability  and  ever-changing  novelty  and  felicity 
of  design  as  to  hold  present  markets  and  win  new  ones  by  these 
qualities.  Many  young  and  half-civilized  countries  are  yet  to  be 
commercially  conquered  and  assimilated.  The  field  is  large. 
German  capital,  like  British  and  American,  will  help  to  develop 
these  countries  and  to  make  better  and  larger  purchasers  of  them. 
The  untold  millions  of  Asia  are  alone  enough  to  engross  the 
commercial  ambition  of  the  more  advanced  nations,  and  there 
are,  besides,  South  and  Central  America,  Africa  arid  Australia 
to  be  thought  of.  The  semi-savage  peoples  to  the  north,  in 
Asiatic-Russia  and  elsewhere,  will  need  more  of  manufactured 
commodities,  and  will  be  able  to  pay  more  for  them  as  rapidly 
increasing  means  of  communication  with  them  will  bring  them 
within  the  pale  of  civilization.  There  lie  Germany's  chances, 
as  those  of  other  leading  trading  nations  of  the  world,  and 


THE   OUTLOOK   FOR   GERMANY  299 

with  her  awakened  enterprise  she  will  not  be  slow  to  avail  herself 
of  them. 

Regarding  agriculture,  the  present  Agrarian  movement  will 
never  solve  the  problem  for  Germany.  In  fact,  it  may  be  con- 
fidently predicted  that  the  resistless  march  of  events  will  shortly 
dispose  of  that  movement  for  good  and  all,  and  this  irrespective 
of  the  question  whether  just  at  present  a  small  but  powerful 
clique  might  triumph  for  awhile.  Germany  has  outgrown  her 
agricultural  clothes,  and  is  marching  in  a  powerful  column  along 
with  the  rest  on  the  highroad  to  the  fullest  industrial  develop- 
ment. She  cannot  retrace  her  steps,  and  she  cannot  again 
become  a  land  of  preeminently  soil-tilling  proclivities.  To  be 
able  to  compete  on  even  terms  with  her  commercial  rivals,  she 
must  have  for  her  labour  plenty  of  foodstuffs  at  low  prices,  and 
since  her  own  soil  will  not  produce  that,  she  must  take  it  from 
countries  of  virgin  soil.  There  is  no  overcoming  that  simple  but 
portentous  fact. 

The  pacific  tendencies  of  our  age  are  indisputable.  This  fact 
is  nowise  vitiated  by  recent  events.  The  Hague  conference 
showed  that,  for  it  was  the  first  event  of  the  kind  which  history 
chronicled,  and  its  influence  on  the  thought  and  convictions  of 
the  leaders  of  men,  its  enunciation  of  the  universally  accepted 
theorem  that  war  except  in  defense  is  wrong  and  bloodshed  a 
sin,  has  been  lastingly  powerful,  though  the  time  has  not  yet 
come  when  all  the  world,  under  all  circumstances,  is  willing  to 
translate  this  theoretically  apprehended  truth  into  its  concrete 
realization.  Axioms  are  one  thing,  and  to  consistently  act  on 
them  is  another.  Much,  immensely  much,  is  gained  by  the  gen- 
erally expressed  desire  to  avoid  open  hostilities  on  a  large  scale 
wherever  possible.  But  innumerable  other  manifestations  show 
the  growth  of  pacific  ideas.  In  fact,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  there  is  a  universal  movement  going  on  in  the  minds  of  all 
nations  tending  to  the  preservation  of  peace.  From  this  even 
such  inveterately  quarrelsome  peoples  as  those  in  Latin  America 
are  not  exempt,  as  recent  occurrences  have  proven. 

War  on  a  large  scale  has  become  a  form  of  suicide  for  any 
powerful  nation.  In  that  respect  the  South  African  campaign 
teaches  a  much-needed  lesson  to  the  world.  But  still  less  can  a 
nation  nowadays  afford  to  go  to  war  with  an  adversary  nearly  or 


300  GERMANY 

quite  its  own  size.  Even  if  victorious  in  the  end  it  would  have 
been  such  a  blood-letting,  such  an  enormous  financial  and 
economic  depletion  for  both  sides,  that  a  generation  or  more 
would  be  required  to  recoup.  And  at  the  present  gait  of  progress 
such  a  loss  of  time  and  of  opportunities  would  be  irrecoverable. 
Whoever  loses  time  is  lost.  Germany  will  not  need  her  enor- 
mous army  forever.  The  time  is  fast  approaching  when  an 
honest  and  lasting  truce  with  France  and  Russia  can  be  made. 
A  strong  standing  army  which  on  a  peace  footing  requires  the 
annual  expenditure  of  nearly  a  fourth  of  the  total  revenues  is 
an  anomaly.  It  saps  the  vital  forces  of  the  nation  to  the  point  of 
making  in  the  long  run  competition  in  all  essentials  of  power, 
viz. ,  accumulated  wealth  by  successful  toil,  impossible.  Germany's 
youth  will  then  be  brought  up  to  peaceful  pursuits  exclusively, 
all  but  a  small  fraction  of  it,  and  this  will  strengthen  her  much 
in  the  race  with  her  rivals. 

The  navy,  of  course,  she  must  keep.  The  reasons  for  that  need 
no  pointing  out.  The  brazen  mouth  of  guns  and  the  iron-clad 
walls  of  ships  must  back  up  her  trade  on  the  seas,  and  the 
savages  of  the  Pacific  isles  can  only  thus  be  induced  to  listen  to 
reasons  more  cogent.  Navies  are  potent  teachers  afar.  And 
Asian  despots  are  much  more  likely  to  conclude  treaties  of 
friendship  and  of  regular  commercial  relations  when  such 
requests  are  coupled  with  a  naval  demonstration  in  their 
principal  harbours. 

As  to  the  immediate  future  of  science,  the  qualities  that  have 
made  Germany  preeminent  in  that  will  continue  to  keep  her  so. 
Educational  reform  is  coming  there,  thorough  and  sweeping. 
Discarding  wholly  or  in  part  much  of  her  previous  efforts  in 
certain  departments  of  mental  research  and  mere  speculation 
as  barren  of  tangible  results,  her  savants  will  yet  remain  strong 
in  all  those  fields  in  which  she  has  achieved  high  distinction  in 
the  past — in  history,  philosophy,  social  economy,  medicine,  and 
in  all  the  analytical  and  comparative  sciences  of  every  kind. 
With  that,  however,  a  larger  and  larger  number  of  her  powerful 
minds  will  turn  to  the  practical  fructification  of  discoveries  and 
inventions  and  apply  them  to  everyday  uses.  This  is  the 
tendency  now  in  Germany;  it  will  grow  stronger  all  the  time. 
The  man  of  ideas  has  a  better  future  in  Germany  than  formerly. 


THE    OUTLOOK   FOR   GERMANY  30i 

German  literature  will  soon  emerge  from  its  present  transition 
stage.  Casting  off  much  of  that  hollow  and  cumbersome  tradi- 
tion which  no  longer  tallies  with  her.  living  forces,  with  the  aspira- 
tions and  the  habits  of  thought  of  the  age,  German  literature, 
always  deep  and  always  tinging  the  brain  life  of  the  nation  more 
decisively  than  in  most  other  countries,  will  soon  attain  heights 
never  reached  before.  Everything  points  to  that.  Her  writers 
will  rid  themselves  of  the  strong  and  unhealthy  influences  of 
Ibsen,  Tolstoi,  and  of  the  whole  school  of  French  erotic  novelists, 
and  her  drama  will,  continuing  on  the  present  lines  but  with  the 
additional  infusion  of  a  more  hopeful  spirit,  become  the  powerful 
exponent  of  progressive  Teutonism.  Taken  as  a  whole,  her  liter- 
ature will  once  more  approximate,  as  it  did  in  the  period  of 
greatest  glory,  with  the  literature  of  the  English-speaking 
nations,  a  literature  now  almost  wholly  ignored  in  Germany. 
And  on  her  own  part  again,  German  literature  will  in  the  near 
future  much  more  potently  influence  England  and  the  United 
States  than  has  been  done  for  several  decades.  It  will  materi- 
ally help  to  oust  cant,  and  help  to  prevent  the  growing  feminiza- 
tion  of  both  American  and  English  literature.  In  that  respect 
as  in  some  others  its  influence  will  be  eminently  wholesome. 

In  art,  too,  Teutonic  influence  will  be  stronger  in  the  future 
than  it  has  been  in  the  recent  past.  Germany  is  now  slowly 
recreating  a  distinctive  art  of  her  own.  The  scum  and  foam  of 
fermentation  is  still  too  much  observable  on  its  surface.  But 
the  period  of  fermentation  once  over,  the  world  will  be  amazed 
to  see  how  much  real  beauty  and  how  much  of  solid  worth  is 
concealed  by  this  turbid  surface.  The  new  German  art  will  be 
more  virile  and  more  pure  than  either  French  or  Italian  art, 
more  definite  and  with  more  soul  and  thought  than  English  art. 
Above  all,  it  will  be  original  and  full  of  suggestion.  There  will 
be  no  mere  form  and  colour  on  her  canvases  and  in  her  marbles, 
as  is  the  case  with  Latin  art.  There  will  be  ideas  and  convic- 
tions, and  there  will  be  truth  expressed  in  the  lineaments  drawn 
by  brush  and  chisel.  A  decadent  nation  cannot  have  a  virile 
and  strong  art;  the  form  may  be  there  in  dainty  outline,  but 
never  the  soul,  without  which  all  art  is  like  sounding  brass  and 
tinkling  cimbal  merely.  German  art  will  again  furnish  inspira- 
tion to  our  own  students,  as  it  did  fifty  years  ago. 


302  GERMANY 

In  character,  too,  Germany  will  have  changed  still  further 
within  a  few  additional  years.  For  one  thing,  her  people  will 
lose  that  passion  for  petty  savings,  that  smallness  in  money  mat- 
ters which  clings  to  them  from  a  long  period  of  abstemiousness 
and  poverty,  without  losing  at  the  same  time  a  wholesome  and 
sapient  regard  for  economy.  As  their  political  and  commercial 
horizon  widens  more  and  more,  German  views  will  become  ampler 
and  broader.  That  ridiculous  chauvinism  now  raging  and  roar- 
ing whom  it  may  devour,  and  which  is  so  entirely  at  variance 
with  the  innermost  being  of  the  nation,  will  be  outgrown.  It 
is  in  Germany's  case  an  infantile  disorder,  and  will  disappear  as 
the  average  German  feels  more  secure  of  the  world's  esteem.  In 
its  place  will  come  a  more  rational,  a  stabler  and  more  self- 
sufficient  patriotism. 

All  these  things  will  come  to  pass,  provided,  of  course,  no 
gravely  disturbing  events  are  precipitated  by  an  unkind  fate. 
But  there  is  a  law  of  compensation  working  in  the  destinies  of 
nations  as  of  individuals.  Germany  has  had  her  long,  long 
period  of  misfortunes  and  reverses;  she  will  have  her  period  of 
good  fortune. 

FINIS. 


INDEX 


Agriculture,  German,  necessity  of 
conforming  to  new  conditions, 
299 

Ahlwardt,  Hermann,  his  agitation, 
71-72 

Albreacht,    Regent   of   Brunswick, 

233 

Alsace-Lorraine,  process  of  assimi- 
lation, 67—68 

American  students  at  German  uni- 
versities, 193—194 

American  wives  of  German  army 
officers,  152 

Anglophile  policy,  Kaiser's  desire 
font,  53 

Anglophobia,  prevailing  in  Ger- 
many, 53 

Anti-Semitic  movement,  nature 
thereof,  71 

Applied  art,  revival  of,  in  Germany, 
279—281 

Army  duel  as  a  peculiar  German 
institution,  153 

Athletics  in  German  schools,  190- 
192 

Austria's  policy,  as  to  Dreibund,  51 

Balkan     States,     their    prosperity 

fostered  by  Germany,  101 
Baltic    Canal,    its    advantages    in 

future  wars,  14,  180 
Barth,    Dr.    Theodore,   as   Radical 
Liberal  Leader,  62;  as  editor  Die 
Nation,  264 

Battleship,  type  of  German,  176 
Bavaria,  its  legislative  bodies,  75 
Bavarian  Court,  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  it,  237 
Bebel,  August,  as  orator,  61 
Beehler,    Commander   William   C., 
secret  information  conveyed,  172 
Bernstein,  as  Reichstag  leader,  62; 
changing  the  Socialist  creed,  84— 
85 


Bismarck  Archipelago,  resources, 
etc.,  225-226 

Bismarck,  retirement  of,    i 

Blohm  &  Voss,  some  data,  146 

Boecklin,  Arnold,  as  leader  in  a  new 
art  movement  in  Germany,  266- 
272 

Brusewitz  case,  and  how  it  ended, 
154 

Buelow,  Count  von,  declarations 
before  Reichstag  as  to  Dreibund, 
50;  in  Reichstag,  63-65;  his  re- 
marks on  a  closer  understanding 
with  the  United  States,  292 

Bundesrath,  functions  of,  25 

Cadet  schools,  German,  character- 
istics of,  161—162 

Cameroons,  description  of,  221—222 

Capri vi,  Count  von,  in  relation  to 
the  Socialists,  87 ;  creator  of  com- 
mercial treaties,  88;  his  remarks 
on  Agrarianism,  289-290 

Carolines,  their  value  to  Germany, 
226 

Centre  party,  strength  and  make- 
up thereof,  68-69;  its  prospects, 
296 

Cities,  Germany's,  growth  of,  ioa 

Class  legislation,  glaring  instances 
of  it,  92-93 

Club  der  Harmlosen,  sensational 
trial  of,  157 

Cologne  Gazette,  used  by  the  gov- 
ernment for  news  intended  to 
influence  foreign  countries,  253 

Colonial  fever,  how  it  attacked 
Germany,  219—221 

Conservatives,  as  political  factions, 
69 

Construction  plan  for  the  new  Ger- 
man navy, 172 

Cosmopolitanism,  loss  of,  in  modern 
Germany,  207 


303 


INDEX 


Cretan  trouble,  Germany's  part  in, 

2 

Cruiser,  German  type  of,  178-179 

Das  Echo,  262 

Decorations,  ffite  of,  29 

Delbruck,  Prof.  Hans,  as  editor  of 

Prussian  Annals,  263 
Democratic    ideas    creeping    into 

German  courts,  239 
Deutsche  Bank,  its  nse  and  growth, 

100— 101 

Deutsche  M onatschrift,  262 
Deutsche  Revue,  261 
Deutsche  Rundschau,  leading  Ger- 
man periodical,  259 
Deutsche  Theatre  in  Berlin,  cradle 

of  a  new  German  stage,  267 
Die  Gegenwart,  261 
Die  Gesellschaft,  260 
Die  Grenzboten,  263 
Die  Nation,  leading  Liberal  period* 

cal,  264 
Die  Post,  246 
Die  Zukunft,  264 

Dreibund,  decadence  of,  9,  50—52 
Dual  Alliance,  its  policy  in  far  Asi^ 

10 
Duke  Charles  Theodore  of  Bavaria, 

the  oculist,  240 

Duke  of  Saxe-Meiningen  as  stage 
manager,  240 

Earnings,  average,  of  labour  in 
Germany,  198 

Educated  "proletariat, "  growth  of, 
in  Germany,  186 

Ententecordiale,  Germany's,  neces- 
sity of  an,  with  England  and  the 
United  States,  293 

Ethics  in  the  German  Army,  155- 
'56 

Exclusion  of  Jews  from  the  corps  of 
army  officers,  155-156 

Financial  depressions  in  Germany 
and  its  causes,  1 10— 1 1  r 

Fliegende  Blatter,  typical  of  German 
humour,  247 

Foreign  Commerce,  Germany's 
100—113 

Frederick  Leopold,  Prince  of 
Prussia,  233 

Frederick  William  IV.,  King,  inter- 
esting parallel  with  Kaiser,  18 

Freight,  cost  of,  by  land  and  water, 
I43-M4 


Freisinnige  Zeitung,  Eugene  Rich- 

tcr's  organ,  246 
Friedrichsruh,  a  conversation  with 

Bismarck  at,  283 
Fulda,  Dr.  Ludwig,  dramatist,  270 

Gaming  in  the  German  army,  156- 

_,  iS7 

General  franchise  schemes  for  its 

curtailment,  81 
General  staff  of  the  German  army, 

~  l63 

German  army,  fighting  strength  of, 
4-5 

German  East  Africa,  population, 
climate,  etc.,  224-225 

Germania  Works,  in  Kiel,  some 
data,  147 

German  Naval  Society,  its  charac- 
teristics, 1 66 

German  navy,  actual  efficiency  of, 
5-6 

German  Southwest  Africa,  re- 
sources, etc.,  223 

Germany's  commerce,  figures 
quoted  from  German  official 
statistics,  7 

Germany's  population,  from  official 
census,  7 

Hague  conference,  its  meaning  for 

the  future,  299 
Halbe,  Max,  dramatist,  271 
Hamburg,    some    statistics   of    its 

shipping,  132-133 
Hamburg-America  Line,  facts  and 

figures  quoted,  136-139 
Harden,  Maximilian,  364 
Hasse,  Professor,  Pan-German 

leader  in  Reichstag,  61 
Hauptmann,  Gerhard,  as  leader  in 

the   new  literary  movement   in 

Germany,  266—272 
Haussmann,  Conrad,  in  Reichstag, 

63 
Hohenzollern,  dynasty  of,  and  how 

provided  for,  233 
Hospitality,  esthetics  of,  210 

Illiteracy,  statistics  of,  in  Germany, 

184 

Imperial  census,  a  page  from  it,  109 
Imperial    Civil    Code,    Germany's 

new,  102-103 

Imperial  court,  where  and  how  held, 
_   233-237 
Imperial   Navy  Yard,  some  facts 

about  it,  147 


INDEX 


305 


Imports,  American,  98-99;  general, 
97, 100 

Income  tax,  how  applied  in  Prussia, 
103-104 

Increase,  Germany's,  in  naval 
strength,  179 

"Inspired"  press  in  Germany,  and 
how  made  useful,  253-254 

Investments  of  German  capital 
abroad,  101—102 

Italy's  policy  as  to  foreign  con- 
quests, 9;  as  to  Dreibund,  51 

Jewish  aristocrats  in  Germany,  241 

Jewish  population  in  Germany, 
census  figures,  72 

Jingoism,  alarming  increase  of,  208; 
infantile  disorder  in  Germany's 
case,  302 

Journalist  in  Germany,  his  inevi- 
table position,  256-257;  person- 
ally man  of  high  character  and 
education,  358 

Kaiser,  how  misunderstood,  15—17; 
sayings  and  mottoes,  18-22;  his 
influence  in  the  Federal  Council, 
26 

Kaiser's  addresses  from  the  throne, 
30;  how  he  influences  the  army 
and  navy,  30-31;  his  impulsive 
speeches,  32— 33;  personal  defeats, 
34-35;  quiet  family  life,  37-49; 
his  democratic  mannerisms  and 
innovations,  241;  his  influence 
on  press,  254-255;  inimical  to 
new  art  and  literary  movement 
in  Germany,  275;  his  sculptured 
ancestral  gallery,  276;  the  Kaiser 
and  the  Schiller  prize,  278; 
Joseph  Lauff,  278;  his  Wiesbaden 
performances,  279 

Kiao-chau,  acquisition  of,  3;  de- 
scription and  prospects,  226 

Klinger,  Max,  artist,  274 

Koloniale  Zeitschrift,  262 

Kotze,  Baron  von,  in  relation  to 
court  scandal,  37 

Kreuzzeitung,  unique  position,  and 
why,  250 

Kriegspiel,  as  a  means  of  military 
training,  163 

Krupp,  Fried.,  115 ;  Alfred,  116 

Labour    conditions    in     Germany, 

106-107 
Lenbach,  Franz,  painter,  273 


Leipzeger    Bank,    reasons    for    its 

failure,  112 

"  Lex  Arons, "  failure  of,  189 
Liberalism  in  Germany,  decrease  of 

it,  70;  necessity  and  prospects  of 

a  revival  of,  295-296 
Liebermann  von  Sonnenberg,  Reich- 
stag leader,  61 ;  as  agitator,  71-72 
Liebknecht,  as  a  Socialist  leader,  82 
Lindau,  Paul,  260 
Living,  average  cost  of,  at  German 

universities,  193 
Localanzeiger,  a  recent  departure  in 

German  journalism,  252 
Luxury,   growth  of,  in   Germany, 

199-201 

Mahan,  Captain,  Kaiser's  adoption 
of  his  books,  40 

Manufacturer,  German,  a  typical 
case,  108—100 

Marriage,  difficulties  of,  in  the 
empire,  201 

Marriage  relation,  changes  wrought 
in  the,  213-215 

Marshall  Islands,  226 

Meinecke,  Gustav,  262 

Memoirs  of  Bismarck,  fears  of  anti- 
German  alliance,  9;  as  to  Drei- 
bund, 50 

Midland  Canal,  Diet's  refusal  to 
sanction  project,  34,  75 

Military  cabinet,  Kaiser  s  relations 
to  it,  28 

Miguel,  Dr.  von,  in  relation  to 
Polish  question,  100;  originator 
of  Prussia's  new  tax  system,  103 

Monroe  Doctrine,  Germany's  atti- 
tude toward  it,  54-55;  Bismarck's 
remarks  apropos  of  it,  284-298 

Morality,  decline  of,  in  Germany, 
201-204 

Morganatic  unions,  their  increasing 
frequency  in  Germany ;  examples, 
241-242 

Municipal  managements,  with  illus- 
trations and  comparisons,  215- 
217 

National  debt,  Germany's,  102 

National  Liberals  reason  for  decline, 
70-71 

Nathan,  Dr.  Paul,  264 

Naumann,  Pastor,  as  anti-Socialist 
leader,  94 

Naval  service,  compulsory,  in  Ger- 
many, 174 


306 


INDEX 


Newspapers,  in  Germany,  their  rise 
since  1870,  245;  absence  of  power- 
ful sheets,  246;  revenues  small, 
political  influence  likewise,  247— 
248;  the  party  organ,  249;  low 
estimation  in  which  held,  256 

Norddeutsche  Allgemeine,  how  it 
originated,  247;  Bismarck's  bar- 
gain with  it,  253;  its  editor 
created  "commissionsrath,"  257 

Nord  und  Sud,  260 

North  German  Lloyd,  its  rise  and 
growth,  139-141 

Officieuse  press  in  Germany,  252— 

2S3 

Outlook,  Germany's,  as  a  manu- 
facturing centre,  297-299 

Party  grouping,  in  Reichstag,  58- 

59 

Party  rule,  absence  of  it,  58 
Periodicals  in   Germany,   of  small 

influence,  259 
Pessimism,  new  German  literature, 

tinctured     with     Tolstoi's     and 

Ibsen's,  269 
Plan  of  campaign,  Germany's  naval, 

178 
Police     omnipotence     of,     in     the 

empire,    205—207 

Posadowsky,  Count  von,  in  Reich- 
stag, 65 
Postal     system,     German,     recent 

improvements,  105 
Potsdam,  as  the  second  residence  of 

Kaiser,  238-239 
Presentations    at  German   Courts, 

238 

Prince  George  of  Prussia,  239 
Prince  Henry,  visit  in  America,  50 
Prince  Regent  of   Lippe,  struggle 

between  Kaiser  and,  34 
Professor,    new   type    of    German, 

I94-I9S 

Protesting  factions  in  Reichstag,  66 
Prussian  Annals,  263 
Prussian  Diet,  genesis  and  functions 

thereof,  73-74 
Prussian  electoral  system,  defects 

thereof,  74 

Railroad  system,  Germany's,  102; 

profits   accruing  to   State,    104; 

improvements,  105 
Regencies  in  German  States,  237 
Rei  sanzeiger,  and  its  uses,  233 


Reichstag,  functions  and  powers  of, 
26 

Reichstag  building,  description  of 
it,  56-57 

Reptile  fund,  feeding  the  govern- 
ment press,  252 

Reuss,  odd  customs  of  enumerating 
rulers  of  these  principalities,  239 

Revenues  of  Kaiser,  as  King  of 
Prussia,  233;  for  "representa- 
tion purposes"  as  Kaiser,  233 

Revolution  of  1848,  its  small  influ- 
ence, 95 

Richter,  Eugene,  as  orator,  62 

Riedler,  Professor,  as  to  school 
reform,  187 

Rodenberg,  Prof.  Julius,  259 

Russia  and  France,  colonial  policies 
of,  lo-n 

Samoa,  resources,  etc.,  226 

Schichau  Works,  some  data,  146 

Schlieffen,  Count  von,  163 

School  reorganization  in  Germany, 
187 

Siemens,  Werner,  126 

Social  legislation,  nature  and  defects 
thereof,  89-90 

Socialist  movement,  modification 
in  it,  82-85 

Socialist  party,  its  growth,  79;  its 
conquest  of  industrial  centres, 
80;  representation  in  Reichstag, 
81;  attitude  toward  social  legis- 
lation, 89;  outlook  for  it,  95-96; 
chances  of  its  affiliation  with 
Liberalism,  296 

Socialist  press,  251 

Sohm,  Prof.  Rudolf,  advocating 
justice  to  labouring  element,  94 

Stoecker,  Adolf,  methods  of  agita- 
tion, 71-72 

"  Streberthum  "  in  Germany,  190 

Strikes  in  Germany,  106 

Stuck,   Franz,   painter,    273 

Student  duels,  decrease  of,  192 

Stumm,  Baron  von,  as  a  social  and 
legislative  factor,  91 

Sudermann,  as  leader  in  a  new 
literary  movement  in  Germany, 
266-272 

Tax   system,    new    Prussian,    how 

beneficial,  103 

Telmann,  Conrad,  novelist,  268 
Tidiness,    phenomenal    growth    of, 

"5 


INDEX 


3°7 


Togo,  description  of,  221 
Tonnage  of  German  vessels,   135— 

136 
Traffic  on  German  interior  waters, 

136 
Tuition  fees  in  German  schools,  184 

-187 
Turko-Greek  War,  Germany's  part 

in,  a 

United    States,    Germany's    desire 
for  intimate  relations  with,   21, 

TT  5.3-55. 

University  attendance  in  Germany, 

185 
Usurers  in  the  German  army,  157— 

159 

Virchow,  Professor,  his  opposition 

to  utilitarianism,    189 
Von     Bodelschwingh,     Pastor,     as 

anti-Socialist  leader,   94 
Von  Hartmann,  Edward,  on  wilful 

bachelors,  203 
Von  Hohenlohe,  Prince,  Chancellor 

of  the  Empire,  his  remarks  on 

the  Agrarian  movement,   291 


Von  Liliencron,  Baron  Detler,  poet, 
271 

Von  Tirpitz,  Admiral,  scheme  of 
crew  supply,  174 

Von  Treitschke,  Professor,  as  edi- 
tor of  Prussian  Annals,  263 

Von  Vollmar,  in  Reichstag,  62-63 

Von  Wolzogen,  Hans,  268 

Vorwarts,  main  Socialist  organ,  85; 
characteristics,  251 

Vossische  Ze-itung,  why  its  influ- 
ence diminished,  250-251 

Vulcan  Works,  history  of,  144—145 

War  Academy  of  Berlin,  scope  of 
it,  162 

Wetterl6,  Abbe\  in  Reichstag,  63 

Woman  question,  a  new  factor  in 
Germany,  211-213 

World's  Fairs,  Bismarck's  depreca- 
tory remarks  on  them,  287 

Wurttemberg,  absence  of  younger 
element,  75 

"  Younker"  party,  its  make-up  and 
influence,  87 

Zolling,  Theophil,  261 


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